Call of the Wild
by ruth baulding
Summary: Stranded on an uncivilized planet, master and apprentice meet the natives, encounter the Laws of Nature, hunt and are hunted, and howl at the moon together.
1. Chapter 1

**Call of the Wild**

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**Chapter 1**

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Gerroo watched the newcomers approach. They walked on two feet, erect, without ever placing their forepaws upon the ground, as though perpetually advertising their availability for mating; and they had no tails. Their bodies were covered in veils: brown and floating veils that billowed with the hot wind, veils that made them blend with the grass and the earth, covering the bright white gleam beneath. They were strange.

But she had never seen clouds descend to the Plains before; only in Song did such things happen, in generations past. Her people had never yet been visited by the deities of the sky; and it came as a mild surprise to her, a challenge to her half-formed theological principles, that these two visitors from on high had a _scent - _ a distinct and complex mingling of odors carried to her on the warming breeze. Perhaps they allowed it, to herald their coming. The wind told her many things. They were both male, one older than the other, though both strong and healthy, smelling of fresh sweat and exotic pheromones. Their perspiration smelled of confidence and skill and intelligence, like hunters, leaders of packs. This and their posture made her look eagerly for the band of females which must surely follow in their wake, but there were none to be seen. So they must be nothing more than a bachelor band after all – a strange thing, considering their upright stance and their abundant, overwhelming dominance signals.

Maybe all gods reeked like an alpha male. It was strange indeed.

She eyed the younger one as the pair approached. This smaller cloud had head fur sticking up straight in tufts, like an infant. The other was significantly larger and had sprouted a full mane, a flowing full cascade of fur, some spilling over its face, most of it falling over both shoulders, fluttering a little in the wind. This would be the alpha of their pack.

Sure of this one and most important thing, Gerroo loped forward to intercept them and stood upon her hind feet as they did – not in the mating signal, only in a hopeful imitation of their own weird gait. She waited for them to speak first. The clouds that sailed across the World's ceiling were silent except in time of monsoon; but perhaps these emissaries who bore a full-blooded scent would also have voices with which to howl?

They stopped a short distance away, and stared at her, with waning-moon shaped eyes, eyes that were colored like the sky, white and blue and only a speck of black in the center. Their azure gaze was more unsettling than all their other foreign traits combined, but Gerroo was a Scout, unafraid and sworn to protect the pack. Eventually she spoke, for they made no sign of breaking the silence, and the day was growing older, noon fast approaching.

_Welcome to the Plains, strangers. Why have you come?_ She asked, in her own tongue, as politely as she could.

The strangers held up their forefeet – white as clouds, and splayed into long, attenuated parts like tree branches, soft and bending extremities without claws or fur, and then settled down upon the ground before her, folding their hind legs beneath them and lowering their veiled bodies to the sweet-smelling crushed grass, the brittle dirt. Their blue eyes never left hers.

Gerroo accepted this signal. They did not grant her dominance – she had not expected that anyway – but they offered non-hostility. She knew the Songs. The clouds were powerful, and unpredictable. They could be friend or enemy, bring help or disaster, good luck or ill omen. In any case, it was wise to listen and obey the Laws of hospitality, for the clouds were bound to the Way as surely as the humblest thing that crawled beneath the sun. She settled herself against the baking earth opposite them, front legs stretched out in the pose of watchful peace. The clouds sat with their haunches folded under them and their spines perpendicular to the earth, pointing back skyward to their origins. It looked most uncomfortable. The veils bunched up around their limbs, making them look like piles of fresh turned earth, anthills surmounted by small, round heads. When the visitors still said nothing, Gerroo continued.

_These lands are marked for hunt by my pack. As far as the scent carries. Are you here for food?_

Again they seemed to understand at least part of her speech, though they said nothing in reply. The taller one reached under its veil-covering and withdrew a soft skin, the smooth gutted carcass of an animal that had no scent but that of minerals. The stranger upturned this flaccid object, until a trickle of water dribbled upon the ground from its small mouth. An image of water, cool and clean, appeared unbidden in Gerroo's mind, as sharp and present as though she had scented it.

She stiffened and thrummed a warning deep in her throat. The Cloud had touched her Dreaming, without permission. But perhaps all gods did thus. Her hackles slowly settled again. It would be unwise to exhibit hostility to a deity, even a trickster of the sky.

The younger one then opened its mouth to speak softly. She inclined her head, both ears straining forward to catch the unfamiliar cadence of its voice. It was resonant, promising a good howl like a young hunter. She heard his teeth and tongue clicking and stopping his breath in a meaningless rhythm, a pattern without thought behind it. The song of what he said was empty to her mind, but it rose and fell fluidly, twisting across the blistering air like a scudding cloud. The older of the gods nodded his head in answer, his chin dipping and rising again, his blue eyes never leaving Gerroo. She licked her jaws, thinking. This was hard. Difficult. They understood some of her thoughts, and could touch her Dreaming, but she could not understand them.

However, the Law commanded generosity, It was a sacred duty to show them to water, though they were the keepers of water themselves. Perhaps it was a test? She stood and half-turned, holding them with her eyes. _Come._

And she trotted away, leading them to the place where the Scouts often stopped for a drink, the little cleft in the rocks where water leaked and pooled in the mud before the ground drank it back. They all three pushed through the overhang of the greedy plants, and stepped into cool shade. The strangers then drank, lying flat on their faces, one keeping watch while the other sated his thirst. They were seasoned hunters, these clouds. She barked in laughter at the manner of their drinking, though: they did not use their tongues like proper people did, but plunged their flat snouts into the puddle as though eating it. When they had finished, they drowned the empty mineral-skins in the water until they too had drunk their fill and grown bloated with it. The heavy sacks then went back under the earth-colored veils.

Gerroo thought they might leave then, climbing back into the sky or dissolving into mist like the dew at morning. But the clouds stayed solid, scented strongly of sweat and weariness, and hot blood running freely in their veins. The smaller one dropped its veil covering to the earth, revealing loose-hanging skins of white beneath. Then it did a strange thing: it clawed off its own hide, until this too lay crumpled atop the veil, revealing another white skin beneath, one damp and much better-fitting to his form. The older cloud repeated this bizarre ritual, until the ground was covered with their cast off hides, the bloodless remnants of their flaying.

Then they stretched out beneath the branches of the flowering bush, to sleep.

Gerroo cautiously sniffed at their cast-off skins, and found that they smelled of sweat and hunger and battle-heat, but also of vegetable fiber and a harsh lifeless mineral stink, one she did not know. It was all a mystery beyond her comprehension, one which might mean good or ill for the pack. In either case, she knew her duty: she must watch the watering hole as long as they stayed. It was the Law. She laid down a short distance away, where the sun could not beat too hard upon her back, and prepared for a lengthy vigil.


	2. Chapter 2

**Call of the Wild**

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**Chapter 2**

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"It's just past meridian, master – do you think a probe has been sent after us yet?" Obi Wan Kenobi hoped not; the temptation to stay here, in relative shelter, away from the scourge of the sun and the scouring wind, was a challenge even to Jedi resolve. Perhaps they could wait out the remainder of the day here, and move onward under cover of darkness…. But then again, perhaps staying here was nothing but suicide. He squinted at the painful blue expanse which peeked intermittently through the prickly canopy overhead.

"I sense no immediate threat," Qui Gon Jinn replied. "Do you?"

"No… but what about other natives? There are huge predators out on these grasslands. I saw them before we, ah, _landed."_

The Jedi master turned his head a little, to regard his apprentice dubiously. "I'm surprised you had time to see anything. That was quite the crash."

"I like to know what I'm getting into," the Padawan muttered, squeezing his eyes shut against the noonday glare, bright even beneath the protective boughs. "And a watering hole might be a focus of territorial dispute," he added, still elaborating on the theme of present anxieties.

"I don't think so," the older man assured him. "A watering hole is a sacred place. I sense our host's feelings. Here we may rest without fear of being disturbed; in fact, we need not even keep watch. Our friend is doing that already." He inclined his head slightly toward the shaggy, powerful form of Gerroo, lying stretched upon the ground a stone's throw away. "I cannot say when we will have another opportunity to rest, so make the most of this one."

"Yes, master." It wasn't as though the Jedi Padawan needed much encouragement to rest. Their escape from the Trandoshan mercenaries had been narrow, a harrowing end to a frustrating mission. The resultant crash had not been to his liking; and the subsequent hike across these blazing grasslands, in an effort to put as much distance between themselves and the easily traced hulk of their ship, had been grueling. The temperature had climbed into astonishing reaches by mid morning. Now, thirst sated and tired limbs finally eased upon the soft earth, he needed only his teacher's permission to fall immediately into the boneless sleep of exhaustion.

Qui Gon smiled and closed his own eyes, allowing the Living Force to pulse and flow around and through him. Here, on this unknown world, it was vital and uncomplicated, harsh yet invigorating, like the sun's beating rays.

It was quite true that he did not know when they would be able to rest again; indeed, there were many things he did not know. Their exact location was among these lacunae in his omniscience. Whether there were any sentient people dwelling here besides those represented by their guardian-host was another question, and attendant to it was this query: did anyone here possess technology sufficiently advanced to enable the Jedi to repair their fallen ship's comm equipment, or to send a long-range distress signal? He did not know, at the moment, when their next meal would come, or whether the nighttime would dictate that they find or build shelter, or whether the seeming truce they had established between themselves and the creature nearby would last any meaningful length of time. Another being might have felt a twist of anxiety at this impressive phalanx of unknown factors – or even have succumbed to a full blown panic attack. Even another Jedi, such as Qui Gon's young apprentice, might consider these questions worthy of brooding contemplation. But Qui Gon himself was not of a temperament to fret for the future or any of the changing and obscure possibilities it involved. He was confident that the Force harbored full understanding of these difficulties, as well as a solution to each and every one of them; the fact that he did not at present participate in this knowledge bothered him not in the least. It would all be revealed in time- and the difficulties of survival would also be overcome, one by one, in the order they presented themselves.

He rolled his dark cloak into a comfortable pillow behind his head and slitted one eye open to be sure their host was still keeping watch. She was; her long legs stretched out upon the mud-cooled earth, her deep, dark-hued eyes trained on him with equal respect and caution, a curiosity to mirror his own. He sensed her confusion regarding his metaphysical status, her hesitance to touch him or his Padawan. That wasn't a bad thing, necessarily. He decided to let it remain unresolved for now. Behind her fretful musings about the unexpected intruders, there was also her solemn desire to protect the scared peace of the watering hole, a conviction that sprang from a blurred wellspring buried deep in primal instinct and burbling out into half-formalized religious belief. That in itself was fascinating; while the creature crouched so near had no outward appearance of sentience, her presence in the Force was unmistakable.

Intrigued, he reached out to nudge at her mind again, only to receive a low growl and a half-hearted baring of long canine teeth in answer – a warning to desist. Withdrawing, he folded his hands over his bare chest and decided to ponder the implications of this fortuitous meeting later. Within minutes he had joined Obi Wan in a deep, much-needed slumber.


	3. Chapter 3

**Call of the Wild**

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**Chapter 3**

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It was not until the sun balanced on the horizon, a burning eye, that Gerroo began to worry. The two thin, pale skinned strangers – descended Clouds, trickster gods – still appeared to sleep, their breathing now completely synchronized, and very slow. She wondered whether they, like some of the Elders of the Stones, hunted together in the Dreaming. But of course they did; they were deities, were they not? Even if they did smell like things of flesh.

She stood and prowled over to the pair of them, mesmerized by the slow rise and fall of their breath. The alpha lay on his back, his abdomen and vitals all exposed like a pack member showing obeisance. Yet even in sleep his dominance signals were clear, a sharp contradiction to his strange posture. One of his soft forefeet was closed lightly about the smaller one's foreleg, above the misshapen paw. This younger one slept curled half on its side, like a pup. Perhaps – and this was a strange thought – it _was_ a pup, the offspring of the larger one. In Song, the gods were said to procreate among themselves – and here was proof. That would explain the smaller Cloud's infant mane and the reason the alpha had no females with him. He would not start a new pack until this pup had been raised.

He lifted her nose into the wind, full of newfound wisdom. Her Scouting today had discovered things strange and wonderful, much to report to the pack. With darkness might come other things, also strange, sometimes dangerous. There would be no moon tonight, and so no hunt. The wind brought her uneasy tidings, and she lifted her ears into it, high and straight.

There: the faint evil thrum. The chitatik were swarming. Formless, dark, they approached over the grasslands. Gerroo stood tall, hackles bristling. The chitatik were coming, spreading over the Plains. They would come for water, like all living things, but they did not heed the Law. Anything they found here, they would eat, in defiance of the Way. This was known by every pup, taught to every litter; every one knew that this blasphemy was the reason the chitatik were cursed, forced to carry disease and famine on their backs wherever they went. She shuddered, sending her back fur rippling upright even further. Chitatik swarms were often precursors of skyfire. They fled their hives before the great tongues of flame descended, thus warning all others who lived under the sky.

She knew her duty – as Scout, she must warn the pack. But she must also stay at this watering hole so long as the strangers lingered.

She had little choice; to remain here would be folly. She edged yet closer to the sleeping deities, tongue lolling a little over her teeth. Her panting textured the wind's whisper, measured out the swiftly-passing seconds. The alpha intimidated her- she had to admit it. Skirting his feet, which were flat bottomed, with shining metals imbedded in the thick skin, Gerro approached his pup instead. He smelled of stale sweat, and hot coursing blood, salty and bitter like iron, and a mixture of spice and dirt and sweet young flesh. She felt the soft twist of maternity deep in her belly, an urge she had not felt since her last litter was birthed, and gently licked the place behind his tiny deformed ear where a pulse beat faintly under exposed skin.

The pup stranger was wide awake in an instant, but did not cry out or move a muscle. He was a well-trained hunter. A heartbeat later, the alpha was awake too, as though the one had jostled the other without touching him. Gerroo's flesh crawled, as it had when the elder had prodded at her thoughts, her spine shivering at the evidence of their link in the Dreaming. But there was no time to waste. She barked at them sharply. _We must leave. The chitatik come. I must warn my people. You must leave this place now._

The pup suddenly turned his head in the direction of the oncoming swarm, though his tiny ears could not possibly have found them in the wide waste. He said soft words to the alpha, in their own language, his voice tense. The alpha nodded and sat up, all in one motion, shaking out the folds of the brown veil-covering and draping it about his broad shoulders. He looked at Gerroo with his moon-crescent eyes, all sky-blue and rimmed in shocking white, and into her mind another unbidden image sprang: that of protection, sheltering trees and caves and underground burrows.

Gerroo was growing accustomed to the abrupt invasion; but still, she shook her head vigorously to dispel the intruding phantasm. She backed away a few paces, hoping they would follow. The Clouds now stood upon their hind-feet again, a foolish way to run. _Flee! _ She shouted at them, deep throated, but they did not dash away. The chitatik grew ever nearer. Growling in frustration, she perceived that she again had no choice. _Follow!_ She commanded, loping a few paces off, in the direction of the pack.

At last the two obeyed, and she quickened her pace, paws flying over the dried grasses, the crumbling rain-starved earth. To her astonishment, the gods were fast upon their hind legs, much fleeter than she would have thought possible. Soon she was sprinting flat out over the familiar contours of the pack's hunting grounds, the grasses bending beneath her rushing feet, the two Clouds trailing in her wake. What Raoo would say about them she dared not think; the pack alpha did not take well to challengers and usurpers and thought little of the divinities remembred in Song. Raoo's was a mind bent on survival and the needs of his family; he did not know the Dreaming or the things that moved within it.

Gerroo did not think. Instead she ran. And the newcomers ran with her.


	4. Chapter 4

**Call of the Wild**

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**Chapter 4**

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"Ah..," Qui Gon Jinn commented, rather breathlessly, when the prolonged run finally slowed to a cautious walk along the ridge of a grassy swell lined by drought-gnarled tree trunks. The she-creature led them forward, plucking a path through the brambly overgrowth with small, precise steps.

Obi Wan followed last, discreetly rubbing at a painful stitch in his side. He had not done a Force-sustained sprint of that length in some time, and he was loathe to admit to even the pang of a taut muscle. It would only mean _endless_ training runs over hundreds of kilometers. He had learned over the years to announce his various discontents with an eye to diplomatic self-preservation.

"Don't fret," the tall Jedi answered, sensing the thought despite his apprentice's tight-lipped silence. His eyes gleamed. "My knees are killing me."

They were clothed in near-darkness now, the last smears of lurid red and gold sinking on the far horizon. Their guide abruptly halted and threw back her head in an ear-splitting howl. Her call was answered by another from the far side of the ridge, and then accented with a series of short, staccato barks and yips. She bounded down the steep slope, the Jedi slithering after her. At the end of the descent, amid a cascade of dust and small pebbles, they landed in a soft stretch of turf carpeted by a flowering grass. Another semi-circle of black twisted trees stood in a stately ring at its boundaries. Beneath their spreading roots were dark openings, entrances to dug-out burrows; from these shady porticos emerged the citizenry: people like their guide, shaggy and toothsome, some walking on four feet, others half-crouching upon hind legs to have a better look at the visitors.

Cautiously they pushed further into the midst of this expectant circle. A low thrum of curiosity reverberated in the air and the Force as the Jedi stepped softly forward into full view of the watching pack members. Like their host, none of these wore clothing or ornaments, nor carried weapons or tools of any kind. And yet their minds shone in the universal energy with a distinct light that marked them as beings possessed of full intelligence and freedom.

The leader – a hulking male crowned with a trailing ruff of thick fur - paced into the center of the ring and touched noses with the female who had led them hither. She dipped her head almost to the ground and then lifted it again, holding her throat exposed before him, an obvious submission signal. The chieftain gently grazed his teeth against her jugular and then released her in a ritual gesture of dominance. She turned, dark eyes flicking to the two humans, and spoke a few rumbling phrases in her native tongue. _Strangers, clouds descended,_ she explained.

The massive alpha padded forward and reared onto his hind legs, until he stood eye to eye with Qui Gon. The surrounding pack grew silent and tense. Obi Wan's hand strayed to his saber hilt.

The Jedi master exchanged a brief admonitory glance with his apprentice before turning deliberately to face the chieftain again. He bowed low before the waiting pack leader, straightening with exquisitely measured calm and raising his chin to bare his throat. A growl of surprise ran around the circle. The mighty jaws of the chief opened a fraction and grazed across Qui Gon's exposed skin before withdrawing again. The witnesses stirred and relaxed. Several humming sounds of approval sounded in the night air. Stars glinted silver, reflected in dozens of shining eyes.

The chieftain turned his amber eyes upon Obi Wan next, the question clear. Qui Gon took a step between them, eliciting a collective growl of displeasure from the pack. "Obi Wan," the Jedi master instructed quietly. "They need to see the chain of command. In their own way."

The Padawan raised his eyebrows but reserved all comment. He carefully sank to one knee before Qui Gon and tilted his head back, leaving his own neck unprotected. The tall man laid one hand against his student's throat, as though preparing to throttle him, and then let go. The gathered pack thrummed and muttered its assent. The chieftain fell back a pace, accepting the declaration of relative authority.

_Chitatik are swarming,_ their guide warned the crowd, her voice a sharp barking shout. _Shelter your families._

_Now! Take to earth! _The chieftain rapped out his orders in a thunderous voice, one which echoed off the nearby rise of hills. His people scattered, slinking and scurrying into their homes beneath the trees' roots, disappearing beneath the protective arches of the dark limbs into subterranean fortresses. The scout who had accompanied them dropped to her four legs and turned glittering eyes upon Qui Gon. _With me,_ she seemed to say, her urgency rippling in the Force. _Or face death here among the chitatik._

The Jedi master nodded and jogged after her, Obi Wan close behind. They scrambled under the roots of a twisted pillar of black wood and slithered into a soft cavern beneath. Here below the air was cool and sweet and scented strongly of rich soil and musty fur. Their hostess crouched near the entrance and hastily threw up a barier of fresh earth against the opening, sealing the three of them in protective darkness.


	5. Chapter 5

**Call of the Wild**

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**Chapter 5**

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Gerroo lay across the hastily erected barrier, guarding it with her body. Who understood the ways of the Clouds? They might even be mad enough to attempt leaving before the chitatik swarm had passed overhead. She remembered young Karff, last dry season. The fool had dug himself free of his shelter when the noise had stopped, thinking he was safe to go make water in the field beyond. But of course the hungry chitatik had been roosting, quiet and invisible, and had feasted on his flesh. The tribe had found the dust of his bones and howled over him the next day. Only one who willingly sought death would leave this hollow before the new day's heat had driven the chitatik away. That was the Law of the grasslands. Those who wandered off its sure path deserved – or at least invited – what retribution they earned.

Above, she could hear the first edges of the swarm arrive, noisy as a sky-fire storm. She could hear nothing but the clack of their wings against their armored bodies, the drone in the air, their angry war cry. They swirled and eddied around the trees, the grasses. They would soon have reduced the bones of yestereve's meat to dust. That was their Way, and a good one. Without the chitatik, who would clean up the mess that hunting and eating left upon the land? Who would take the bones of the dead, so they did not linger under the sun? Gerroo did not love the chitatik; but she respected their place in the Dreaming.

The night dragged on, and the fury of the chitatik's song dwindled – but Gerroo heard them faintly rustling in the limbs of the dead tree overhead. They still had much time to wait. It was too dark to see anything inside the burrow, even for hunter's eyes, but she smelled no fear or restlessness in the strange deities who shared her hovel. They sat still, over there against the earthen curve of its far wall, as calm as she was herself, understanding the danger without and the safety within. They were seasoned hunters, she reflected. Maybe there were chitatik swarms in the sky, too. It was clear they had weathered such assaults before.

She rose, and padded across the soft floor. The cool soil felt soothing on her scorched paws. It had been a long day, hot and dry. The chitatik often came after such a day. Often, too, the heat preceded the time of cloud-fall, when water poured out of the sky. Already the sky had dumped down strangers, emissaries sent to her people for some obscure cause; why not rain as well? She approached the alpha first, as was polite. He touched her mind again, and she growled at him. She did not like the feel of him: his Dreaming was a storm wind, fleet and unpredictable, ever changing and elusive. He walked a Way that was for the Clouds, perhaps, a drifting, highborn Way. But it was not her path, that of the grass. The alpha made low noises in its throat at her, peaceful sounds. She sniffed his strange hard-bottomed foot and gave him the pack-name Fleetwind.

The pup was sitting on its haunches beside the alpha, not curled at his elder's feet as was proper. She nudged him in the shoulder to remind him of good manners, but he did not seem to understand. She felt him reach into her mind, too – only more tentatively. He felt different than the other Cloud, another kind of strange. Her hackles rose at the first brush of his thoughts, yet she was reluctant to pull away. He was eerie, but mesmerizing, and she named him Lodestone.

He reached one of his soft paws behind her ears where it was impossible to scratch, and dug his thin blunt claws in, rubbing at the spot until she thrummed in gratitude. She thanked him very formally on the nose, even though he was still a pup, causing him to sneeze explosively. She nudged him again, in the chest, feeling that manners took precedence over all else. The elder, Fleetwind, made a deep chortling noise in his throat, which Gerroo took for their laughter. The two clouds exchanged some clicking soft speech that she did not understand. Afterward, Lodestone sighed, a long hiss of warm breath, before he finally moved to his proper station, obediently curling into a loose ball at Fleetwind's feet.

The alpha leaned forward to scratch behind the pup's ear and pat his head – all the while making that same odd sound of amusement. Lodestone yipped some fierce reply, and was rewarded with a swift tug on the thin hair-tail that grew beside his one ear. Then the gods again fell silent. Gerroo laid down beside the pup, thumping her tail upon the soft earth of the burrow, to encourage him to relax and accept his place in the Way. Without Rank, no pack could endure – cloud or grasslander. Perhaps these two had come down from the sky so that Fleetwind could teach his pup these things. It was said in Song that even the Clouds learned from their elders and followed the Way.

Soon enough, she was falling asleep beside him., her legs tucked in comfortably beneath herself. She felt the younger cloud extend his soft paw to touch her face, very gently, and her drifting mind was pulled inexorably into a shared Dreaming, her memory mingling with Lodestone's, a weird running together of sky and grasslands.

_The novice pack ran together on the hunt, the scent full in their faces, the hot sun caressing their backs, the grasses sweet as they bent beneath rushing paws._

_Another young pack, all of them upright on two feet, draped in white cloud-cloth, many kinds of faces mixed into one clan, also running together, leaping over obstacles and crawling beneath others, climbing, swimming, rolling and tumbling, balancing on high ledges, laughing and exulting. Their was no sun, no grass, no scent of the kill, only abundant light and a faint sense of flowing water, chiming in the motionless wind._

_Skyfire arched down from the firmament, hitting the plains, setting them to burning. The pack howled in reverence and fled, the cold rain pelting at their backs as the storm split the skies asunder._

_A convocation of clouds. In their hands they held skyfire, but they did not burn or howl. They wielded it in a slow dance, the brands of flame sweeping about their white figures, obedient to their will, blue and green tongues of light never wavering._

_The Stones where the Ancestors spoke to those who knew the Dreaming, the black chunks of rock jutting imperious from the edge of the Plains, where the pack's hunt ended. One of the elders, hoary with age, sitting among the Stones as the moon rose full behind, casting them in brilliant silver shadow. The howling of Songs, together, at the edge of the circle._

_Another circle, one ringed by light, in a nameless place made of stone, white stone rising like a mountain above a plain of sharp edges and hard angles, a white cloud-stone-mountain-home, a place too difficult to imagine or understand, full of that same chiming in the wind that did not move. _

Gerroo shook herself free of the confusing images, wriggling out of the shared memory with a growling whimper. The young cloud's sleep was disturbed; he jerked awake with her, the Dreaming fading into the rustle and hum of the chitatik outside.

She licked the pup's face in formal salute, as was customary. Then she waited for him to respond, and when he did not, she nipped his arm to remind him once again of his manners. Fleetwind spoke, and Lodestone answered, and then there came a great torrent of words, rapid soft speech in low voices, as though the gods were arguing between themselves. Gerroo growled; the younger should not take such liberties with his chieftain. Then Fleetwind said something very sharply, almost a bark. Lodestone went rigid, and then leaned forward, very softly touching the tip of Gerroo's nose with his tongue. It was a feeble salute, but she forgave him on account of his youth and his strangeness to the grasslands.

It had been a weird Dreaming. But Gerroo savored it for the remainder of the night, and many hours into morning, until the sun had grown high and hot enough to drive away the chitatik, and they were able to escape the confines of their hollow.


	6. Chapter 6

**Call of the Wild**

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**Chapter 6**

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The horizon was already wavering with heat-mirages when the Jedi emerged from the stuffy burrow. Qui Gon stretched his long back and legs, eliciting several loud cracks and pops. Beside him, Obi Wan dusted off his filthy tunics and ran fingers through grimy hair, sneezing loudly in the bright sunshine.

"Don't tell me it could be worse," he warned the older Jedi.

"I didn't say anything," Qui Gon remonstrated mildly, scanning their surroundings. Tall grasses spread in rolling waves over the undulating terrain, broken here and there by copses of withered trees.

"You were going to." The Padawan stifled another sneeze and cleared his throat. "How long do you suppose the planetary rotation is here?"

"Nearly thirty standard hours, I should estimate," Qui Gon replied. "And judging by the swiftness of the night, I would say we've arrived near the summer solstice. This is a season of extremes." He pointed at the dying landscape. "You can see it in the shift of balance around us… life reaches a nadir in the heat of the dry season. Only that strong enough to survive will endure. We're just in time for the annual drought and famine."

"We have indeed, master. _I'm _ famished."

The tall Jedi shook his head. "When are you not?" He gazed about at the beings crawling singly and in pairs from their subterranean hiding places. "These people are hunters. They will expect us to fend for ourselves."

They watched their hosts greet one another and then break into smaller groups, milling about the shady spaces beneath the sparse trees, or sauntering away in twos or threes. The Jedi were all but ignored. "I suppose that means we are accepted," Obi Wan remarked.

"For now," Qui Gon answered. "We'll look for food out on the plains – and see if we can find any traces of a probe unit, while we're at it."

"I have a bad feeling there's no civilization here at all, master," Obi Wan confided in his mentor as they set off across the dry grassland. "Which means we could be here a _very long time._"

"Don't center on your anxieties," the older man chided him. "A solution will present itself. In the meantime, we will focus on evading those who may have followed us, and finding something edible."

"Yes, master…." The Padawan tromped doggedly though the brown landscape. "Not grubs," he said, firmly.

Qui Gon's long easy stride carried him purposefully forward, his silence an eloquent exhortation to patience and acceptance. Resigned to his fate, and very likely to a disgusting meal, Obi Wan followed behind him, treading in the same line of bent grass his teacher carved for them. He checked all his belt pouches for the hundredth time, and discovered for the hundredth time that they had indeed used all their survival rations in the course of the last mission. He tamped down his rising discontent with the thought that _this_ predicament was quite pleasant, compared to being chased out of the capitol city on Velquad by an irate mob, then pursued by bloodthirsty Trandoshan bounty hunters armed with high caliber sniper rifles and an arsenal of deadly booby traps. On the other hand, that line of thought reminded him….

"Master." He waited for an answering grunt before continuing. "Why would the Velquadish government request Jedi intervention if public opinion was so acutely prejudiced against us? And those mercenaries _must_ have been expecting our arrival. They had the spaceport staked out in advance."

Qui Gon sighed. "I half expected something of the sort. The invitation was a trap – a ploy to convince the Republic to send additional security forces to the present dictator, to help suppress the unruly citizenry. Had we been killed, the Senate would have granted that wish – thus supporting the status quo with force of arms, rather than the reforms we planned to propose. A cunning power play."

"And the bounty hunters are still following us," Obi Wan mused.

"The bounty sum on our heads still stands. There are strict _rules_ regarding contracts of that nature.. And the Trandoshans are shrewd businessmen. We are valuable fellows, my young Padawan."

This thought cheered the young Jedi considerably. "I hope they find us," he declared.

"Always looking for trouble," his teacher shrugged.

"Not looking, master. Anticipating. Those Trandoshans are sure to have comm equipment and a ship, which may be our only means of leaving here again. And I'm sure their current owners would enjoy a prolonged vacation in this lovely place. Reptilians like the heat, after all."

Qui Gon snorted in amusement. "If we encounter them, I should like it to be on our terms – the event may have to be delayed until the right moment. We may need to stay here awhile."

His apprentice groaned- inwardly, of course, but the tall man felt it clearly in the Force.

He halted, and half-turned, one eyebrow raised. "Why do I sense such impatience in you, Obi Wan?"

The Padawan opened his mouth in surprise.

Qui Gon continued without waiting for an answer. "Our business on Velquad is finished."

"In a blazing conflagration," Obi Wan pointed out dryly.

"Be that as it may, we have no need to return thence. I have sent the mission report to Coruscant; the Senate and the courts will revoke Velquad's standing as a protected territory; the present government will wither without trade privileges. A happy ending. And in the absence of a mission, your primary duty is what?"

His apprentice released a frustrated breath. "To study the ways of the Force and the Jedi path," he answered flatly, as though reciting by rote.

Qui Gon ignored the undertone. "For which purpose, you have all that you require. The Living Force is most abundant and pure here. You have _me," _– he smiled a little- "To keep you from brooding too much. You should be content. You want for nothing essential to a Jedi's life, except perhaps a good meal, and that will come along in its own time. What have you to complain of?"

Obi Wan swatted a large, stinging insect away from his face. "The _climate?"_ he tried.

"It could be worse."

The temptation to roll his eyes was overwhelming, but Obi Wan was well-trained. He inhaled deeply and deliberately unclenched a fist. "Forgive me, master. I will … work on shifting my perspective. I have been impatient."

"Yes," Qui Gon smiled, resuming his quick pace. "But you are improving. I expected by now to already have had this conversation three times. I must admit I'm impressed."

His apprentice chose to interpret this as a compliment. They tramped forward in silence again, skirting the edge of a low rise, a wrinkle in the land that cast a small shadow under the morning sun – a scant but welcome protection from the building heat. They drank from their water skins, and used Force techniques to keep their body temperatures down. They had left cloaks and outer tunics behind; soon enough trousers and undertunics were soaked with perspiration despite their efforts to remain cool.

They sat and rested after an hour's journey, having seen no signs of a probe droid, nor of anything remotely edible. The shadow cast by the ridge was quickly shrinking as the sun climbed higher; they hunched within its narrow width, the air still hot enough to seem liquid in their throats and lungs.

"I wish I could take off my _boots," _Obi Wan complained, letting his head drop onto his upraised knees. "And eat them," he added, sourly.

"Patience," Qui Gon reminded him, eyes drifting closed. It was unbearably hot, far past normal human endurance. And to think that their new acquaintances were covered in thick hides…

The Force surged in warning. The Jedi sprang to their feet in unison, just as a huge hoofed beast, a dark mass of muscle and curving tusk, plunged out of the rustling grass and charged straight at Qui Gon, head low and tall quills rattling on its back like a crest of spears.

The Jedi master leapt over its head at the last moment, and the confused animal carried its murderous charge through to the Padawan. In a blaze of blue light, Obi Wan severed the snarling head from its body. The two parts ploughed into the earth in a cloud of dust and crushed grass seeds, the edges of the ghastly wound already sealed by the saber's blade. High above, a carrion bird called harshly.

Obi Wan deactivated his weapon and touched the ugly scoring on his left boot, where the beast's tusk had grazed the nerfhide. "Perhaps I'll leave them on after all," he muttered. "That was close."

"And here is the desired meal, " Qui Gon observed cheerfully.


	7. Chapter 7

**Call of the Wild**

* * *

**Chapter 7**

* * *

Gerroo panted in the burning heat. There had been poor hunting this morning; only a few of the sharp-tusks remained on the plains after the chitatik attack last night. And her folk did not hunt the sharp tusks, anyway. Too many warriors and good hunters had fallen to them, and Raoo had made a new Law, one that was not part of the Way but only part of the pack's life-song. Some had challenged his authority then, claiming that he could not make Law for himself – but Raoo had killed them in fair combat, or driven them away into exile, and those that remained accepted the Law. It was wise, and spared lives. Still, in such a desperate time, Gerroo almost wished that the sharp tusks were lawful prey, or that she could find a small one, a weak or wounded straggler. Now the sun was crawling high in the skies, and the runners and scenters would retire to a watering hole to rest during the long zenith, and to hope for better hunting in the evening hours. She dragged herself toward the nearest one, eager to quench her thirst and to cool her paws in the good mud.

But she had not gone far before the wind brought her alarming news. She smelled something ominous, wafting in the breeze. Her nose was better than many of the others; she was a pack scout, and usually the first to find danger on the horizon. Barking in consternation, she sprinted in the direction of the brewing trouble, covering many _arrruh _ of grass before she saw the thin line of black rising into the sky like a venomous serpent, twisting and dissolving into the blue. There was the crackle and snap of dying wood, the sweet sharp scent of smoldering grass. But this fire was uncanny – it did not move, nor spread. A fire-in-one-place she had never seen before. It was some prodigy and wonder wrought by the clouds, perhaps, tricksters and fickle lovers of destruction that they were. In a moment, as she crested the last slope, her suspicions were confirmed. A fresh blast of wind brought her the scent of three things: the strangers, fire, and a fresh kill.

She rushed forward, yammering at them, and then skidded to an abrupt halt, her panting tongue lolling over her jaws in astonishment. The gods were crazy. They had removed most their skins again. Only the ones covering their legs remained, down to their hard, flat feet. Their naked hides glistened with moisture, as though leaking water from within. They had tied other pieces of their strange white coverings around their heads, covering their manes. Nearby lay their kill – stunned again, she noted that it was a forbidden sharp tusk. Neither of the deities was blooded, from battle or from eating. They held sharpened sticks in their hands, and held the good fresh meat over the fire, destroying it. The delicious red flesh turned grey and then black, burning. Gerroo actually collapsed backward onto her haunches, feeling ill, when the alpha popped one of the burnt-flesh pieces into his mouth and chewed. He made a low sound in his throat, an approval sound, and the pup did the same with another piece of wretchedly ruined meat.

Gerroo could take no more of this madness. Howling at them to stop their raving blasphemy against the Way, she descended the last slope and stood a safe distance from the unmoving fire. Her eyes darted from the flames to the sharp-tusk's carcass and back to the strangers. She growled out her astonishment in a tone normally reserved for wayward pups. _How dare you bring death to the Plains! Fire is an enemy! And the sharp tusks are forbidden by the chieftain! Are you bash-skulled or born witless?_

When her tirade had ended, she merely stood heaving in great breaths, stunned at her own audacity, but stunned also that deities would so flagrantly violate the Way. A dark thought formed in her mind: perhaps these were deviant Clouds, exiled by their peers for their transgressions against the Law. Perhaps they had been cast down to live among the grasses, just as defiers of Raoo's authority were cast out of the pack. It would make sense of many things. She growled at them, legs splayed wide apart, waiting their response.

The tall alpha said something to his pup in their soft, clicking language; the pup replied in kind, and then the alpha murmured another long string of their soft words in reply and held a hand over the fire. Miraculously, impossibly, it sputtered and died, leaving only the stinking residue of ash and molten fat. Gerroo nearly reverenced him, then, but she remembered that he might be an outcast among clouds, a maverick and a rogue. She sniffed at the pair of them, recognizing that they had been stripped of their fair and weightless bodies and made to bear grubby and sinewy and solid ones instead.

_Do not endanger the people of the plains!_ She barked at them. _I do not know what your crimes are, but we do not deserve to suffer on account of your punishment._

The two gods – fallen gods – exchanged a worried glance.

_Which of you did this? _ Gerroo demanded, circling the sharp-tusk's torn body. She nosed at the headless corpse and looked from one to the other of them, expectant.

It was Lodestone who stepped forward and went down on one knee before her, so that their eyes could meet. His eyes were white-rimmed like the alpha's, and the color of flat water. He spoke a few of his clicking words, but also brushed her mind with an image, a memory of himself wielding a branch of sky-fire in his hand. The sky-fire swept down and around, slaying the sharp tusk instantly, searing its head from its body. Gerroo did not like the intrusion into her mind, but she allowed it. The pup and she had dreamed together, and it was against the Way to reject their dreambond now.

_Sharp tusks are forbidden! And fire is forbidden! _She chastised him. _You will not do this again. _She raised her head to Fleetwind. _Discipline your pup. Raoo will not be pleased._

The two strangers made more conversation with each other after that, but after much discussion they consented to follow her back to the watering hole for the afternoon nap.


	8. Chapter 8

**Call of the Wild**

* * *

**Chapter 8**

* * *

"No fire means eating raw meat," Obi Wan grumbled as Qui Gon and he jogged along behind their guide. "And eating raw meat means parasites and bacteria. Which mean severe food poisoning."

"You worry too much, Padawan."

"I'm not worrying. I'm assessing future possibilities and drawing out the implications thereof. For example, you do realize that when I expire from food poisoning, you will not be allowed to build a funeral pyre, due to the same prohibition which forbids cooking?"

Qui Gon spared his apprentice a severe look. "Then you would do well not to expire. Besides, you are more than capable of handling a bout of food poisoning. I've shown you the relevant Force techniques."

"Yes, master. I shall endeavor to be sick in a manner befitting my training."

But the impertinent grin that accompanied this statement did not escape the Jedi master's notice. "I would think," the tall man added, in a reasonable tone, "That anyone who can down one of Dex's all-you-can-eat House Specials in one sitting with no apparent ill effects can hardly be averse to abusing his digestive system now and then. And you did quite well with that quanta worm ceremonial meal on Vandor last year."

"Oh…. Yes. I forgot. I still owe my master appropriate retribution for that debacle."

"A Jedi shall not know revenge," Qui Gon reminded him smugly.

They reached the outskirts of a long, low depression in the ground, a natural shallow reservoir where some muddy water collected from the last rain still lingered. It was girded by a wide stretch of squelching mud, churned into a wet mess by many feet. In this dark, sticky morass sprawled many of the pack's hunters, enjoying the cooling effects of the wet soil upon paws and bellies.

Qui Gon indicated the shallow pond. "Fill our skins form the middle section, where the water is more pure." He leaned down to remove his boots just outside the ring of mud, and Obi Wan followed suit. The simple action drew the startled attention of many nearby. Soon a small crowd had gathered round to sniff at the Jedi master's exposed toes and the two pairs of discarded nerfhide boots. Obi Wan saw his opportunity and took it: while Qui Gon was pleasantly occupied trying to explain the novelty of _shoes _ to their hosts, he waded into the center of the pool and carefully replenished their water supplies.

"Your parasites, sir," he said to Qui Gon, with a low bow, as he handed back the refilled water skin.

"Hm." The older Jedi quirked a lopsided smile. "Turn around a moment."

The Padawan obeyed, only to be startled by the sensation of two large handfuls of cold mud being slapped upon his bare back. Qui Gon proceeded to smear the sticky mess over both his shoulders and the length of his spine, then turned him about by the elbows and repeated the procedure on the front side.

"You are unusually quiet and reserved today, ObI Wan," the Jedi master remarked as he surveyed his handiwork.

The Padawan snapped his mouth, which had been hanging open in astonishment, shut.

"You were already starting to sunburn," Qui Gon explained. "This is an old and trustworthy preventive measure." He serenely scooped up two more handfuls of mud and decorated his own chest and front in like manner. "You'll have to do my back."

Obi Wan complied, reflecting that this at least raised no ripple of interest in the onlookers. He applied a liberal layer of mud to Qui Gon's broad back, smirking a little as the sticky goo clotted in the Jedi master's long hair. Idly, he wondered whether there were some way to ensure that this detail was included in the mission report. He could well imagine the Council's reaction could they behold the infamous rogue Master Jinn at this very moment, covered in mud and living among wolves as though to the manner born. Come to think of it, perhaps his infant master had in fact been raised by a pack of wild nekks on his homeworld, before the Jedi discovered him and brought him to the Temple… it would explain a great many things, Obi Wan decided.

"Are you all right?" Qui Gon's deep blue eyes were gazing into his face with an expression of keen concern. Creases radiated around his eyes as he squinted in the too-bright glare of the noonday sun.

"I'm fine, master," the Padawan responded automatically, though a heartbeat later he admitted to himself that the excoriating heat might be making him a bit giddy, even if he wasn't yet badly dehydrated – or dead of food poisoning, of course.

The tall Jedi straightened, dubiety echoing in the Force. "Lie down for a while. I don't think they will hunt again until evening, when the temperature drops a bit."

They found a spot where the bent skeleton of some hardy bush cast a straggling web of shade upon the ground, and stretched out full length beneath it, imitating many of the hunters resting nearby. Overhead the sun burned, the purple-blue sky shimmered and wheeled in the merciless heat. All around them, the pack settled into a dazed slumber. And the Jedi soon conformed to local custom.


	9. Chapter 9

**Call of the Wild**

* * *

**Chapter 9**

* * *

The sound of thunder roused Gerroo from day-sleep. Yet when she raised her nose, hopefully, to scent the wind, there was no promise of cloudfall – or even of an impending skyfire storm. Only the heat and stillness of late afternoon. She thought then that she might have dreamt the sound, but many of her kindred were also stirring, their tall pointed ears lifting skyward in expectation. And there: under their bush, the strangers were also sitting up, their flat faces and wild blue-grey eyes shifting around the dome of the cloudless skies.

Then came the second clap of thunder, loud enough to set Gerroo's hackles into stiff array. Lodestone and Fleetwind jumped to their feet. Their _real_ feet, the ones with soft clawless digits on them, not the flat hard casings in which these soft white feet had first been enclosed. The second thunder seemed to arouse their attention, and the pup soon thrust one of his mud-encrusted limbs into the air, pointing. Gerroo followed the line of his motion, and behold! There, high in the blue dome, were two large birds, dark specks soaring across the heavens, very high. She did not recognize their shape, but the people of the plains gave little thought to the sky dwellers. Theirs was a different part of the Way, and they never gave the packs any trouble. The strangers watched these birds with great interest, until they had flown many long day-runs away, over the horizon.

Gerroo shook herself fully awake and trotted over to the Clouds, curious to know their opinion. Perhaps as former dwellers in the sky, they simply had a natural interest in birds and flying things; or perhaps they knew something she did not. Her clanmates yawned and rolled over and went back to dozing; what did they care about speeding broad-wings, even if these had been heralded by inexplicable thunder? Besides, they too far away to investigate now.

The alpha was speaking in his low musical voice, while his pup's head leaned forward, his mouth set in a very thin line. He made some of his own clicking and stopping noises form time to time, and then he lifted a small twig and began to scratch in the damp ground with it. Gerroo drew closer, intrigued. Fleetwind studied the mud-scratches as though they were important, like the scat trail of some prey, or scent leavings and footprints of some rival hunting pack. Finally he shook his head slowly, his long mane hairs matted with mud where they brushed his shoulders.

_What is it? _Gerroo demanded in a quiet growl, edging near enough to share in the splotchy shade of the kirroouff bush. _Why are you digging in the earth?_

The pup etched another few marks upon the moist ground. Gerroo stared. His scratches crossed one another and formed circles and odd undulating shapes. The lines of them lay together like the contours of a land seen far away, like the shape of a place-dreaming. She sniffed, yet there was only mud. Surely then her mind was tricking her? She watched, entranced, as the pup continued to add lines and shapes to his mess of scratches. He looked up at her, expectant, the twig lightly tapping against his knee. She looked again, and for the briefest of instants, Gerroo's mind again lied to her: she seemed to see the silhouette of the broad-wing that had soared overhead a few minutes ago, as though its body had been crushed into the mud, leaving behind a track. Her heart throbbed. Then she lifted a paw and smudged the sorcery out of the mud, obliterating it. She seized the pup's stick in her teeth and snapped it.

_Dark Dreaming is forbidden by the Way!_ she snarled, her fur rising in angry tufts.

Now Lodestone looked affronted and turned his untamed blue eyes to Fleetwind, who said some words to him in their own tongue. Gerroo growled and waited. Fleetwind pointed to the ground where the deceiving magic had been wrought and said yet more. His pup made a soft grunting sound, which might have been a kind of laughter, and then carefully smoothed over the place with his hands, watching Gerroo intently with wide, sky-colored eyes.

She barked at Fleetwind. _Correct your pup. Or do you condone such wickedness? The pack will cast out any who are twisters and blasphemers of the Way. Fire, unlawful killing, and now this. Your young one strays. _

At this the two clouds exchanged a look, holding each other's eyes for a long time. Gerroo could not tell if Fleetwind were angry or not, for their faces were difficult to interpret.

_Well?_ Gerroo demanded. The pack was stirring now, gathering round, drawn by the harsh scent of her anger, the thrum of her displeased growl. If need be, they would enforce the mandate of the Law. There was no place for such perversity upon the grasslands.

Lodestone's breath came out in a long, audible sigh. He muttered something, then, and Gerroo could smell his insolence clearly. Why did Fleetwind not assert his authority? Such actions should not go unpunished. She growled impatiently, and the waiting pack echoed her sentiment.

Fleetwind met her gaze, and then turned to his pup. The expectation was clear.

Gerroo barked, once. _Now!_

The tall alpha shrugged his shoulders upward, then – in a lightning flash of motion- he pounced upon his pup, seizing the youngster about the middle, throwing him flat upon the muddy earth. The pack howled their approval as the two divinities tussled fiercely in the slime, grappling and twisting in a protracted wrestling match. The people of the plains understood this well; Fleetwind was finally doing the proper thing. They bayed and yipped their encouragement to him. A spirited pup was a blessing, but needed many reminders of its rank. Lodestone yelped a little when Fleetwind finally pinned him, flat upon his back, with his soft underbelly all exposed. The alpha put one knee on the young cloud's chest and growled something at him in their own tongue. The pup barked out some impudent string of words, and tried to writhe away, but the elder moved with him, swift and strong as a crushing serpent, and pinned him again, this time face-downward, his forefeet bent painfully behind his back. But the foolish pup did not know when to surrender and show obeisance; he continued to struggle, yelping his defiance in a strong clear voice, one strangely broken by the short barks Gerroo now recognized as laughter. Fleetwind, too, was chuckling deep in his throat, even as he held the ferocious younger cloud down in submission., demonstrating his superior strength and rank.

The pack howled for him to finish the contest. A bite on the neck would do; of course, it was possible the clouds had other customs. The pup squirmed and fought vainly for release. Fleetwind looked thoughtful for a moment. Breathless, he glanced over at Gerroo, a wicked grin pulling his lips apart to reveal small, flat teeth. Then he did a strange thing. Raising his one free foreleg, he swatted the wayward pup smartly upon its hindquarters, repeating the sharp and stinging blow several times until Lodestone howled out some exotic imprecation.

The thoroughly chastised cloud rolled away, and the pack howled their hearty chorus of approval. To Gerroo's surprise, both the gods were shaking with mirth, their wild blue eyes besmeared with water, raindrops trailing down their faces, carving rivulets in the grime and mud. The hunters scattered back to their resting places and Gerroo thrummed her satisfaction.

_It is well done, _she told Fleetwind. _He will not misbehave again._

She glanced at Lodestone, wishing to lick his ear again as a sign that she was no longer displeased, but the older cloud was too formidable a presence, so she merely turned tail and returned to day-sleep, still pondering the strange thunder in the sky and the uncanny events of this hot morning.


	10. Chapter 10

**Call of the Wild**

* * *

**Chapter 10**

* * *

"You took that well," Qui Gon remarked, stretching his long legs out beneath the gnarled bush. Dry mud flaked and drifted off his skin, though the thin remaining layer did provide a certain relief and protection from the blistering sun. It dried to a dull earthen color, like baked clay, making him look like a crude, unfired ceramic statue.

Obi Wan rolled over and fixed him with a sarcastic glare. "Thank you, master." He also was coated in dried mud, looking a frightful mess. The wrestling match had left him with a layer of clay clinging to the tips of his hair, leaving it hardened into a clump of filthy spikes, a style as outré as any Core world fashion trend.

Qui Gon chuckled some more, enjoying the pleasant recollection of their romp, the sheer vitality of this pristine, untamed planet. "I've wanted to do that for years," he added, feeling the Living Force vibrate around him, deep and untrammeled in its power. "It's been long overdue."

Obi Wan rubbed at his backside and snorted. "Corporal chastisement is against the Code, master. In case you'd forgotten."

"Is it?" Qui Gon thrust his hands behind his head and let his eyes drift closed. "You are, of course, free to make a formal complaint before the Council when we return to Coruscant."

His apprentice mulled this over for a long minute. "I think I'll preserve my own dignity," he decided, wryly.

"A wise choice," his teacher concurred. "You have little enough left as it is."

The Padawan gazed idly at the skies above. "Your wisdom is my example and guide in all things, master."

"Brat. I should have let you have it in earnest. That was just a taster."

"I thought striking out in anger was also forbidden?" Obi Wan inquired with exquisite feigned innocence.

"It is on the list, " Qui Gon admitted, "Just below impertinent wagging of the tongue."

"Oh." The young Jedi sobered. "Speaking of forbidden, it appears that not only the use of fire but also writing and drawing are now proscribed activities."

"Yes," Qui Gon agreed. "But we shall manage. Where are you off to?" he added, as his apprentice rose and retreated a short distance.

"To do the only thing left which is not forbidden by the Code or the natives' laws," Obi Wan's answer came floating back on the hot air. A few seconds later Qui Gon's keen ears caught the tell-tale sound of someone relieving himself against a nearby rock.

"Ah…" the Jedi master's smile faded as he sensed the abrupt shift in his Padawan's mood. When the young Jedi returned from his brief errand, he sat upright, legs folded beneath him in meditation posture.

"Those were Besh class Trandoshan hunting skiffs," he said bluntly. "The sonic disturbance they made was a dead giveaway."

Qui Gon raised his brows. "For someone who professes to hate flying, you cultivate a detailed knowledge of all things relating to it."

"Know thy enemy, master."

The tall man nodded tersely. "True enough. They will easily locate our ship's wreck. After that, I imagine they will fan out to establish a scent trace."

"Do you think they will find us?"

Qui Gon sought in the Force for answers, but the future was always in motion. Still… "The Trandoshans are marvelous hunters. Eventually, they will run us to earth. The key will be to thin their numbers, avoid entrapment, and lure them into bringing a ship closer."

Obi Wan glanced over his shoulder at the sleeping pack. "Without endangering these people in the process," he muttered. "Perhaps we should separate ourselves from them."

The Jedi master was solemn. "As I said, Trandoshans are skilled hunters, and ruthless. I would be more concerned about them discovering these people _without_ our presence."

"You mean we may need to protect them."

"Yes. I fear our arrival has put them in danger. We will stay with the pack until the threat has passed. Anything else would be to irresponsibly abandon them. They are no match for Trandoshan game hunting skills – and I do not think our bounty hunting friends will perceive them as fellow sentients."

"Or care," Obi Wan added. Trandoshans were infamous murderers and kidnappers, rumored to capture other rational beings for use in bloodsport games on distant worlds. The primitive society here would appeal only to their predatorial nature.

"I will try to speak to the pack leader tonight," Qui Gon said. "He should know of the danger. In the meanwhile, I think it will take our pursuers some days to track us down. These plains are vast and we have covered a great deal of distance already. And the chitatik swarm may have obliterated our tracks."

Obi Wan nodded, aware that the arrival of the hunting skiffs heralded the beginning of a new game of hiding and seeking, a trial of patience and skill. The two Jedi sat, quietly watching the blazing sun sink below the far line of the horizon, brilliant filaments of gold and orange trailing across the sky in its wake. Beyond that sunset, but drawing steadily nearer, was a threat, felt as a distant but ugly ripple in the Force.

When it arrived, they would be ready for it.


	11. Chapter 11

**Call of the Wild**

* * *

**Chapter 11.**

* * *

The time of Judgment had come upon the land.

Gerroo paced and panted through the oppressive afternoon. For three days – days and nights, indistinguishable in their merciless heat- the sun and the skies had put the land and all who walked upon it to the trial. The pack suffered in silence, the air swelling molten in their lungs, parching their throats and noses. The cool mud around the watering holes had hardened, and the water shrank before their eyes until it was nothing but a dark sludge. Pups fell into fevered sleep. Seasoned pack members lay, and waited, helpless beneath the affliction. Even the Clouds, the strangers whom the pack had adopted not four days ago, were not exempt from the Judgment. They too were put to the test, made to bear the scourging of the sun.

The sky drew closer during such heat; clouds gathered distantly, taunting the grasslands with a false promise of relief, then burning away beneath the noonday glare. Illusions swam on every horizon, ghosts mocking the living. The heavens watched and judged; those who were worthy they would grant another season of life, those who were not they would claim as victims of thirst and heat. Such was the Way, the winnowing of strength from weakness.

Silently, Gerroo prayed that her pack would be found worthy. They had kept all the Laws, and harbored guests from above, according to the rule of hospitality. None had violated the peace of the water places; none had killed without reason; none had taken a mate that belonged to another; none had rebelled against the chieftain or a superior without meeting due punishment. Surely the clouds would relent and give life back to the land? Gerroo had seen many seasons of judgment, and had lost pups to it more than once. She knew the price to be exacted from a pack that did not abide by the Way. She also knew that this last period was the worst: the time when the burning air brought madness and despair.

Beside her, in the shelter beneath the tree roots, where the pack now spent most the day in fractured sleep, the two strangers also suffered through the Judgment. They bore the trial well, though it was clear they had not the power to keep water in their bodies for long. At first, before the water places ran dry, they drank often from the skins they carried, and refilled them often in the dwindling puddle of the holes. Now there was little left in those skins, and they partook of it sparingly. Their chests gleamed with moisture, and it rained off their faces in slow droplets. When Gerroo licked these away, they were salty. She had tried to teach them to pant, until the elder – Fleetwind- had made her understand that this was impossible for them. They spent long periods sitting on their haunches with their eyes closed as though sleeping upright. It seemed to help, but she was not sure why. There was much she did not understand about them.

And in all this time, the clan had found no food. Soon they would begin to starve as well as thirst. For it was against the Way to eat of that which fell upon the plains from weakness during the time of trial. Those who partook of such flesh were often visited with illness and death themselves; such meat was left to the broad-wings and the chitatik, the cleaners of the land. Long patrols were sent out at night to find prey; and the pack listened eagerly beneath the moon for their howls. But none came, and no food was found, and everyone's stomach began to growl, and the skin around the pups' ribs tightened ominously.

Gerroo stopped her slow prowling around the confines of the dark shelter beneath the earth, and sniffed tentatively at the cloud-pup's face. He was no longer sitting upright, but sprawled upon the hard earth asleep. His ribs were showing, too; but they had a little even in the beginning. It was harder for young ones to endure the time of fast: their bodies demanded food all the time, and they did not have years to give them patience. She could hear some of the pack's pups whining nearby. Their high voices carried in the still air, even through the buffer of earth. Some of them were two-years and three-years, old enough to hunt, not just the small ones. Maternal softness stirred inside her. It was difficult to ignore the plaintive whimpers of hunger. She licked Lodestone's ear, but he did not stir. Fleetwind carded his long fingers through the pup's infant mane, making it stand up in sweat-slicked spikes. Gerroo studied the strange lines and planes of the alpha's face intently, and for the first time she thought she understood his expression: that of worry.

Just then, the heavy silence was broken by a terrified howl from the outskirts of the circle. Gerroo's long ears stood up, and her scruff rippled. The scouts had spotted danger. _Chitatik! _ Their voices cried into the wind. _Chitatik!_

Bad trouble, Gerroo thought. Seldom would the deadly swarms rise in such a heat. Even the scourge of the plains could not survive long under the judgment of the skies. Something must have disturbed their hives; and that meant that not one, but two dangers lurked upon the grasslands without. Many seasons ago a herd of sharp-tusks, maddened by the endless heat, had stampeded through the hives and sent the chitatik rushing over the land in a murderous swarm. Gerroo herself, a young scout in her first season as a full hunter, had sounded the alarm then. Perhaps something similar had happened now.

Fleetwind helped her throw earth up against the opening of their burrow. He did it with his fore-feet, but she noticed that he did not touch the earth. He merely moved his paws, and the soft matter flew upward as though thrown by a mighty wind. She noted his sorcerey but said nothing. This was no time to argue with an exiled deity. And she was glad of the help.

Soon the deafening hum of the chitatik was upon them, as the swarms passed above. Gerroo lay down to wait out the siege, and the alpha knelt beside her. In the dark, the heat seemed to be a living thing, stroking soft choking claws down throats and backs. Gerroo's hide prickled with it. The chitatik settled on the tree's dead limbs above them, and the sound of their clacking legs and wings rustled and chattered so close in the stifling dark that it seemed the hordes were all around them, and they drowning in a sea of black hunger…

Lodestone moaned a little in his sleep and then started violently, a great gasp escaping his throat. Fleetwind bent and caught his wrists as he thrashed forward. There was a silence, and then they spoke in their own language. Gerroo by now could hear the different sounds, though she knew not what they meant, nor how to form them herself.

"Not firebeetles," the alpha said, holding the pup's forefeet.

"Master," the pup groaned. "I'm sorry. A dream."

"It's understandable. Those locust-creatures are swarming above us again."

The pup said a word Gerroo had not heard before, though she could tell it had the meaning of a curse, for Fleetwind made a coughing noise in his throat and the young one again muttered, "Sorry." He shifted to sit upright, and reached a paw across the dark to brush against Gerroo's nose. "Hello there," he said to her. She recognized his greeting, and in reply she licked his sweaty palm.

The chitatik lingered the rest that day, only departing when the sun set. Though none could say what had disturbed them so badly, a sense of dread settled upon the pack. An unknown enemy was loose upon the grasses, in this time of harsh testing. Truly the skies were exacting in their judgment.


	12. Chapter 12

**Call of the Wild**

* * *

**Chapter 12**

* * *

"You are not coming, and that is final." Qui Gon folded his arms across his chest and held his Padawan's stubborn gaze until the young Jedi dropped his eyes. Displeasure still simmered off him like steam off boiling water, but he said nothing.

Above ground, he could hear the impatient scuffling of the hunters, prepared to depart as soon as he was ready. The chitatik had departed, and the moon was high and waxing, wide enough to give light. They hoped to find something – anything – for the pack to eat. The situation was growing dire, and Raoo, at the behest of Gerroo, had granted Qui Gon permission to join the hunt. _All must band together in time of judgment,_ the mighty leader had declared in his native tongue. The Jedi master understood his meaning through the Force.

"Rest," Qui Gon ordered. "You can accompany the next hunt, if need be. Neither of us can afford to expend energy so recklessly. And I want you to use this time to center yourself in the Force. Remember what I showed you; it will make tomorrow easier to bear."

"Yes, master."

"Oh – and Obi Wan? The beard is very roguish. I approve."

The Padawan rubbed on hand across his stubbled chin with a look of chagrin. "Thank you, master…. Good hunting."

A moment later Qui Gon had joined the waiting pack. Tonight's band was comprised the wiliest and most cunning of the tribe's hunters, primarily older males – a grizzled company somewhat like himself, the Jedi noted with a wry smile. Gerroo and one or two other scouts – females without litters – were also among the ranks, as well as a few energetic young hunters. They scented each other before beginning, and then fanned out in a wide arc, loping across the silvered grasses in silent formation, ears lifted high and noses turned into the wind. Qui Gon kept pace, jogging along easily on his long shanks. He reached out through the Force for any sign of life ahead or around him, and felt clearly the coiled-wire tension of his packmates. The moon shone pallid overhead, smiling wanly on the withered land, the heat-blasted remnants of trees.

Many klicks passed beneath their feet, and the long night stretched on without limit, yet no sign of life did they find. Everywhere lay the picked bones of creatures destroyed by the afternoon swarms, unfortunates caught in a panic when the hive had been disturbed. To Qui Gon, the plains echoed with the cries of those creatures that had fled before the terror. Their fear lingered in the Force, a sour tang in his mind. There would be nothing here for the pack tonight. His heart sank, thinking of another day without nourishment. A Jedi could withstand much deprivation, but not indefinitely; and he was certain that his apprentice was closer to his limits than the young man would admit. A weakened body meant a weakened grasp of the Force – and without its power, the extreme temperatures would quickly take a heavy toll. The heat and the humidity that never translated into rain had sapped both of them severely. Another day might be devastating.

_What ails thee?_ The she-scout inquired in her low growl, padding along beside him now, their pace slowing as the hunting pack reached the edge of their scent-boundary.

He laid a hand on her back and felt her flinch at his touch. She had preferred Obi Wan from the beginning, all those days ago- a stretch of time which felt like weeks or months. It amused him: so many of the Council would have deemed him the more wolfish in spirit. He suggested this idea to his companion, but she only sneezed in contempt.

_We run in packs, _ she grumbled back. _You are a lone hunter, like a thunder lizard. Your pup is a born alpha, a gentle leader. You are one-without-a-pack. I wonder that he is able to follow along with you at all. Not many can see or keep pace with the wind._

Qui Gon smiled ruefully. And then he stopped, his hand tightening painfully in his friend's scruff. She barked at him, but he did not loosen his grip. Danger flared at him, carried in the Force, loud and sharp, almost blinding. He backed up a pace, dragging her backward with him. Another pace, and then another, in the tracks they had just made through the dried grass. The scout quivered beneath his hand, instinct supplying what the Force conveyed in more abundance. They cautiously retreated a few dozen paces before he dared act. Lifting a small stone in the air, he sent it floating across the expanse of empty turf, letting it drop softly a mere half meter from the place where they had fist halted.

No sooner had the small object hit the earth than the trap sprung. Huge durasteel ribbons burst from beneath a thin camoflage layer of dirt and broken stems, bending inward like a vise to form a rounded cage, a metallic fist springing shut in one alarming heartbeat. A faint electric blue pulse sizzled about its contours, promising a powerful stunning jolt to whatever thing was caught in its vise. It sat there, empty, in silent menace.

The Jedi master thrust into his hunting mate's mind again, ignoring her sharp bark of protest. He impressed upon her the image of a mine-field, of many such things lying in wait for them beneath their feet. He felt her shudder beneath his hand, but she was a seasoned hunter and did not panic. Slowly, painstakingly, they traced backward along their footsteps, barely breathing, until they came to a place where the earth was hard packed beneath their feet and offered no cover for traps.

Then his companion threw back her head and let loose an awful call. One after another, the remaining pack members bounded back to them, hackles standing on end. The hunt was over; they had found no food, and discovered something much worse. Panting, dispirited, they began the long trek to the waiting clan, bearing their ill news. The pitiless moon looked on and seemed to laugh at their plight. And somewhere, growing ever nearer, another kind of hunter closed in upon them.


	13. Chapter 13

**Call of the Wild**

* * *

**Chapter 13**

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The next day was worse than ever. The sky seemed to descend to the grass, ready to crush it beneath a weight of searing heat. Breath burned the throat that drew it in. The pack's younglings – at least those still strong enough to make a sound – cried all through the long hours of the day. Even the suckling mothers' milk had run dry, with no food and little water to sustain them. The younger hunters prowled restlessly around the perimeter of the trees, murmuring and grumbling restlessly among themselves, doubting the rightness of the Way, stirring up other juvenile madness among themselves. They were impatient, and frightened by the report of metal traps lying in wait just beyond the clan's eastern scent boundary.

Gerroo lay listlessly beneath the roots of her tree. Soon the pack members would begin dying, some succumbing to judgment and others holding fast until the day of mercy. This was the Way. Raoo would use his wits to save his people if he could, but he was not fool enough to esteem himself stronger than the clouds, wiser than the Law. Beside her, Lodestone was also restless. His skin was flushed with pink, and he trembled as though chilled. The alpha sat with his back pressed against the soil of the burrow-wall. Deep lines were on his face, and dark shadows under his eyes. Neither of the strangers looked well.

"We should go out and find them, master. Tonight, while we still have the strength."

Gerroo listened to their words, picking out the separate phrases without comprehension. The music of their speech was fascinating.

"Patience," the elder replied.

The pup paced back and forth, shivering in the relentless heat. "I cannot be patient while these people starve to death. Their younglings are _dying_, master. I can sense it. Why can't you?"

"I know this, Obi Wan. But remember that our foes have well-equipped transports. How many klicks do you think you can cover before you collapse? We must be patient; a confrontation will come to us in time. We cannot and should not rush to meet it. Your desire is driven by something besides reason. Meditate on your motives."

Whatever these words meant, the pup found it unsavory. He dropped to his knees with his back to the alpha and closed his eyes. Gerroo watched in curiosity as his breathing deepened and calmed. How odd these two strangers were, always sitting on their haunches and day-sleeping like that. It made no sense. Finally the pup spoke again. "Forgive me, master. You are right. I am driven by fear."

Fleetwind stretched out his long legs with a soft groan. "All will be well, Padawan. The Force is our ally. Trust in it."

Lodestone's head drifted down until his chin rested against his collarbone. His hands came up to cover his face briefly. "I'm tired," his voice came muffled behind the fingers.

The alpha opened his eyes and looked at his pup with a soft expression. "It's been almost six days," he said. "I'm tired, too."

The young one dropped his hands, frowning, and turned its head to gaze at Fleetwind. Gerroo laid her head along the curve of her forelegs and listened. The heat burned in her lungs and battered against her skin. Her blood was so thin that hr heart barely beat. They were all dying. She wondered if the two strangers understood this.

"But – you just said – "

"I said that all will be well. That does not preclude the possibility that we die here. Whether we perish or survive, there is only the Force. You should not suffer anxiety on account of either option."

"….Yes, master."

Gerroo heaved another unsatisfying, hot breath. It did nothing to loan her strength. The Judgment was upon them now in its fullest fury, the clouds whispering condemnation. Perhaps the whole pack would be destroyed, by heat or by traps. Perhaps one of them had violated the Way, in secret, unknown to the others, bringing punishment on them all. But even if this were so, and the clouds brought them only starvation, then this was still part of the Way. And she should accept it. Her death , the death of the entire pack, would not mean the destruction of the Way. It would endure forever.

"Come here, young one." That was Fleetwind speaking again. Gerroo watched listlessly as the pup wearily dragged himself over to the cramped space where the alpha sat propped against the wall's dirty curve. He sank down until he was curled with his back against the elder's chest, his head lolling onto Fleetwind's shoulder. The elder laid a forepaw lightly atop the pup's head, and there they remained – though asleep or awake she could not tell.

And still the heat pounded down, angry and harsh. Gerroo's eyes slid closed despite her will. How queer, she thought, that her death might be in the company of two sky-born foreigners, discredited gods; and yet, how natural it felt now that it drew nigh. Perhaps all Ways were one after all. Her sluggish mind strove to understand this, but in the end she was too tired to think. Slowly, her vision was replaced by stifling blackness as she too succumbed to restless sleep.


	14. Chapter 14

**Call of the Wild**

* * *

**Chapter 14**

* * *

The evening sun threw angry fingers of red light down into the burrow, which sweltered only negligibly less than the land above. No breeze alleviated the sun's wrath, and the evening dusk only seemed to suffocate the plains with a blanket of opaque heat. Qui Gon leaned against the dirt wall, sliding in and out of sleep and meditation, aware that he was perspiring more than he was drinking, and that even the Living Force could not sustain him forever. Half- slumped against him, Obi Wan dozed fretfully, his breath coming too fast and rasping for Qui Gon's taste. For one moment the Jedi master darkly wondered whether it would have been a kinder fate to have perished in the initial crash than suffer this lingering destruction. In the next moment he had banished the thought utterly, releasing it into the Force with his anxiety.

"A solution will present itself," he murmured. It was now a mantra, the anchor of his inward seeking.

As though in affirmation, or perhaps mocking objection to this assertion, a shadow abruptly darkened the threshold of their primitive home. Their friend and guide, the hovel's owner, raised her drooping head to emit a low warning growl, but the threat held no power. She was almost spent, and could not so much as rise to her feet. The newcomer tottered forward into the burrow a few paces. It was one of the pack's youngest hunters, a male barely past childhood. His fur stuck out in a comical ruff all round his face, and he was followed by another – even younger – adolescent. Foam flecked their jaws where their long tongues hung out, and their yellow eyes were glazed with pain and thirst.

_You are the source of this Judgment, _ the foremost snarled, leering at the Jedi. _You! Who slew a sharp tusk and made fire and who wrought foul sorcery upon the earth. We are punished for sheltering you. You are condemned by the Law and now we all suffer._

Qui Gon reached into the crazed intruder's mind, but met a blank wall of animal hatred. This one was past reason, and past influence, hunger and fear utterly ruling him. Obi Wan stirred awake, squinting at the shadow blocking the feeble red light in the entrance.

The newcomer staggered forward another step. _Your death will bring life for our pack, _ he panted, a hostile thrum issuing from deep in his chest, his ragged hackles rising into a challenging line. The Force tightened with imminent threat.

"I'll handle this," Obi Wan growled, rising to an unsteady crouch and fixing the young hunters with a ferocious glare. Qui Gon sensed both the iron determination and the thin note of abandon which underlay his apprentice's voice. He lay a restraining hand on the young Jedi's shoulder.

"Do not let their fear become your own," he warned.

"Master." The acknowledgment was bare, and delivered in a hoarse whisper, but it sufficed. The young pack-members flattened their ears and backed out the tunnel, in clear invitation. Obi wan advanced, the Force coiling fiercely around him. Qui Gon came next, and then Gerroo, dragging herself back outside with the dregs of her strength.

A circle of spectators already awaited them, including Raoo, the clan chieftain. The huge leader stood a few paces distant from the eager onlookers, disdain evident in his posture; yet he made no move to stop the incipient fight. Clearly he thought it wise to let the festering boil be lanced. The pack alpha would resign himself to either outcome, his only concern the discipline and survival of the pack. After all, he himself had fought for and maintained his own authority in countless other contests of tooth and claw.

The two challengers circled Obi Wan together, muttering curses in their native tongue. The Padawan merely stood at ease, waiting. Only Qui Gon could feel the slow gathering of Force energy, the deepening breaths that heralded blossoming battle-awareness. The crowd of onlookers thrummed and growled in excitement. Rumor had captured at least half their imaginations. In desperate times, every society is tempted to blame a scapegoat; the Jedi master knew this to be no exception.

At the moment when the dying sun's disk touched the wavering horizon, Raoo gave a sharp barking signal. The first of the challengers attacked, rushing at the Padawan with teeth bared. Obi Wan flipped over the headlong charge and pivoted to meet the second attack. The second assailant leapt straight into the air, snarling, only to receive a kick hard in the face, one which snapped his head back painfully and sent him tumbling. He crashed to the earth, twisting and yowling, as his slavering companion bounded forward again, crashing hard into a Force-wall. He fell; his friend rejoined the fight, maddened and howling. Obi Wan ducked and rolled beneath the onslaught, coming up almost too late to avoid his second foe's lunge. The young Jedi dropped onto his back, caught the attacker under the ribs with his feet, and sent the furry body flying into the circle of onlookers, to the accompaniment of much snarling and yapping.

The remaining challenger launched himself bodily at his foe; there was a terrible moment in which Obi Wan went down beneath the assault, holding off massive jaws with trembling arms, one hand gripping either row of deadly teeth. A trickle of blood ran down his wrists, and his angry opponent scrabbled for purchase against his chest, leaving red welts with his blunt claws. Another second's struggle, and he too had been thrown off with the aid of the Force. He landed against a half-buried rock with a loud howl of pain.

The Padawan leapt back to his feet, panting, as the other maddened hunter rushed him again, jaws wide and seeking his enemy's throat. They met in a painful tussle of young bodies, before the audacious young pack member was rolled over the Jedi's shoulder and slammed to the earth upon his back. He lay winded and writhing, yelping in distress. Qui Gon was certain he had heard the crack of at least one rib.

Obi Wan staggered a little. He did not have strength to fight much longer, even with the Force. But the contest was not over. The sole remaining wolf jumped upon him from behind, a predatory leer pulling his dark lips backward over curved teeth. Qui Gon almost shouted out despite himself, sensing his apprentice's exhaustion and the murderous intent of his foe – but in a sudden blaze of blue light the battle was ended, a dark furred tail lay smoking a few meters away, and the young challenger wailed and struggled, the fur at the base of his severed spine still smoking. The lightsaber hummed menacingly in the failing light, a bright line of fire. The pack crept away, reverently, every member displaying his or her throat to the victor. Raoo departed last, his golden eyes watching Obi Wan warily, but with approval, the collegial respect of power for coeval power. The injured and disgraced youngsters dragged themselves away after their leader, their whimpers and cries echoing sadly in the night.

Obi Wan deactivated the saber and sank to his knees. As an afterthought, he wiped the hilt clean on his trousers, but his hands and the fabric were so filthy from the fight that it did little good. Qui Gon smiled and stepped forward. "Here," he said, gently taking the weapon and cleaning it on his own clothing. "I have some bacta left in my medkit." He nodded toward a knot of roots nearby and steered his Padawan toward it.

The stump of smoldering tail lay crushed in the dust, forgotten.


	15. Chapter 15

**Call of the Wild**

* * *

**Chapter 15**

* * *

In the early time, before the sun had risen, while the stars still burned in the purple heavens, an unknown scent came to them on the wind.

Raoo stood thoughtful for a long time, his long mane stirred in the hot breeze which brought these tidings of strangers upon the grass. And then he ordered the pack to move, rousing them all with a baying alarm. He marched them northward, to the very limits of their scent-boundaries, toward the distant Circle of Ancestors, retreating before this threat of the unknown. Had Gerroo been younger, and less wise, she would have questioned his leadership then, as did some of the younger males. What chieftain worthy of the title would order a coward's flight? Raoo subdued the naysayers one after another, leaving a half dozen more good hunters maimed and bleeding, their rebellion answered with swift punishment. The others obeyed. And the fallen clouds came, too. Fleetwind agreed with the chief's decision, experienced and wise as he was. They made for a place of safety.

Gerroo tramped silently along in the line, carrying a suckling pup between her teeth. It dangled helplessly by its scruff, too weak even to struggle against the prolonged touch of one not its mother. Others also carried the young. The old and ill stumbled along bravely, for they were of the pack's bloodline, strong even in affliction. The shamed warriors – those who had questioned Raoo, and those who had challenged the cloud-pup earlier – were left behind to fend for themselves. Raoo said that they had chosen a path of folly and deserved their fate. They said that Raoo was a fool and a weakling and that they would form their own bachelor pack. The parting of ways had been acrimonious, but brief.

The two exiled clouds marched with the pack now, trudging near the head of the long line, each bearing a small pup in his arms. Gerroo padded behind them, watching the line of their backs as they walked upright on hind legs, standing taller than Raoo with their head balanced atop their bodies like succulent iyhrrka. Most their coverings they had abandoned long ago, but their flat feet-casings they would not leave behind. She wondered little at this – their toes were soft and had no pads. They did not look like feet meant to walk upon the soil; and this confirmed her belief that they originally dwelled in a land of clouds and soft air. That strange place the pup had shown her in his Dreaming might be a cloud, for it was white and full of soft water sounds. The dancers in the image had been barefooted as they wielded their skyfire in slow graceful patterns.

She had seen that skyfire leap from its place tonight. Lodestone had held the thing that now hung at his side, and terrible fire had issued forth, making a noise which set her teeth to a painful rattling. She shook her head a little, dispelling the memory of that grating sound, humming in six awful discordant pitches, some lower than low and some higher than high. She knew without being told that the touch of that fire would be instant death. The thing from which it came was like nothing she had ever seen, either. It fit into the stranger's hand, and it was polished like a stone beneath water. It was a weapon like tooth or claw, but it was not part of his body. It slapped against his hip in rhythm with their slow stride: tap, tap, tap, tap – a shushing sound as it brushed against the fiber of his leg coverings. The motion was mesmerizing.

Raoo called a halt at the northern watering hole. Here there were rocks which thrust up from beneath the earth, and a place where water collected among them, unable to sink back into the soil. This refuge was surrounded by a wall of thorn bushes, rooted deep in the clefts of the stone; but many of the pack knew a safe way up. The sanctuary lay at the boundary of their hunting grounds, a place visited by scouts often and far from the menacing field of traps to the east. It was a good place to rest, and they clambered up the narrow path between the overhanging brambles with lolling tongues and shuffling steps. Raoo and the strangers came last.

The sun rose, lighting the sky with pink and orange as they threaded their way into the quiet sanctuary within the brambles. A small but clear pool of water remained in this hole, and all waited eagerly for the chieftain to partake of the water first, precious little though there was. Without discipline, there was no pack; none asserted the right to slake his thirst before the alpha. That was the Way. But just as Raoo bent his venerable head to the pool, Fleetwind barked out in his loud voice and held up a hand. Raoo froze, sniffling at the surface of the pool. The tall cloud then knelt and took something from his belt, dipping this small object into the water and frowning over it afterward for many long bretahs. He shook his head back and forth, many times.

Raoo howled out a stern warning to the pack: none were to drink. The water had been made poison by unknown enemies, angry deities come to persecute them. Whimpers and laments trembled in the air. The sky, glowing with the first day-heat, frowned ever lower, pitiless. The pups began to cry a heart-breaking song of despair. And one young fool, another like those whicih had attacked the cloud pup earlier, sprang forward in defiance of Raoo's order and lapped up water noisily. When he had done, he leered at the chief and padded away, apparently unharmed.

When the pack saw this, a murmur of discontent arose and a handful of others stepped forward, eyes glinting mutinously in the dawn light. Fleetwind rose like a storm wind, then, a green fire standing in his hand, its song drowning out the cries of the pups. Its growl was deeper and more terrible even than Lodestone's skyfire. It promised terrible death to any who touched the water. Angry, fearful, the clan slunk away and settled in miserable heaps around the tainted pool. The two clouds and Raoo stood beside it, alert and unyielding.

And then the one who had drunk from the pool began to whimper and moan, his legs collapsing beneath him, foam pouring from his open mouth. He shuddered, and writhed, and then fell down stiffening as blood trickled form his nose and colored the foam pink like fresh meat. He was dead.

Raoo looked on wordlessly and then stood, howling to his people that any who wished to defy his authority and drink should do so now. He would not stop them. Not a body stirred. The Judgment had descended even to the sacred places of water. Their purity had been violated – an insult to the Law itself. And by this sign, they knew that those who came after them, the layers of traps and makers of sorcery, were not like the other strangers, not respecters of the Way but its enemies, visitors like they had never met before. This omen chilled their hearts within them and killed all hope. And so they lay still in th suffocating morning air, pressed flat to the earth and burning with thirst and hunger and the fever of weakness and heat, only waiting for death to claim them. Even the two clouds now lay, looking dead already in the pale morning light that painted their muddied bodies a sickly white.

Gerroo knew that there would be no further march tomorrow. Unless the clouds relented at last, this would be the pack's dying ground, and the chitatik would gnaw their bones.


	16. Chapter 16

**Call of the Wild**

* * *

**Chapter 16**

* * *

Obi Wan dreamt.

_He was small again – so small that the benches in the Temple's outdoor meditation garden appeared to him as convenient fortresses, hiding places for a game. Tucked neatly beneath one, he folded himself into the Force, watching the urgent patter of feet on the graveled paths just outside the shadow of his shelter. The game continued for some time, until adult voices started calling their names, summoning the younglings to gather round, signaling the end of playtime._

_And then the first drops fell. Rain, spattering down from the sky. It never rained in the gardens here, or outside in the endless city he could see from every window in the Temple. He had a faint memory of rain elsewhere, some other world very green, maybe someplace dimly recalled before this. He wasn't sure. The rain fell harder then, bouncing and skipping off the stones of the path, gathering in strength and making a wonderful music as it touched stone and soil, leaf and branch, a lovely chorus better than any chime, better than any fountain. It was a fountain occupying the entire world, chiming with infinite tones._

_People were calling his name, too, but he chose to stay. The falling water was so peaceful and beautiful, and full of light, and it whispered so many things to him, old things and new things and terrible joyful-sad secrets which he did not understand but which set his spine to thrilling…. He crawled backward into the bed of leaves behind the bench and stretched out in the dampening soil, closing his eyes so he could Feel the blessed water soak his clothes, his hair, dance on his eyelashes and roll along his skin in little sparkling rivers, singing and laughing around him, just as the Light was laughing. He was laughing, too, but very very quietly so nobody would hear him._

_Obi Wan! The voices called, back and forth on the path. Where are you, child?_

_Come out this instant, youngling! The voices were growing vexed, perhaps even worried. Obi Wan Kenobi!_

_Obi Wan! It was quite funny how they called and called. He giggled, holding in the sound until his sides hurt and tears of mirth joined the raindrops trailing down his face._

_Obi Wan! _

That voice was deeper. Different. Qui Gon's.

_Padawan!_

He woke. That voice was to be heeded, obeyed. He had sworn an oath. The gorgeous light of the dream faded, and with it the mirth, and the voices calling along the path, and the soft mulch of the Temple gardens. Instead there was a heavy hot darkness and hard earth beneath his shoulder blades and Qui Gon looming near, whispering his name in a voice rendered hoarse and ragged by long thirst.

But one thing did not fade: the rain. Impossibly, absurdly, it remained in the waking world of heat and desolation and pain. Strong, torrential, and warm as a bath, it poured down upon them from above, in unending sheets, as though an ocean had spilled over the edge of the horizon. It fell in rivulets off the ends of Qui Gon's long hair, pounded into the ground, beat a roaring drum among the rocks. Obi Wan sat up, gasping as water cascaded down his face and arms, washed the mud off his chest, soaked his filthy trousers. He squinted into the black sky and saw nothing but rain driving into his eyes. The delighted howls and barks of the wolf-pack were barely discernible over the riot of the storm.

Qui Gon was laughing, too – not his usual smothered chuckle, but a full-voiced, rich laugh bubbling up like a mountain spring. His hair hung in sopping strands about his face, and his beard dripped like the mossy wall of a cave. He took his gaping Padawan's hands and turned them palm upward, so the water pooled and overflowed between the fingers. "Drink!" he shouted over the din.

Oh, yes. Drink. _Drink!_ Obi Wan cupped his hands and held them to his mouth, gulping down the life-giving water as it poured endlessly over his fingers. He drank and drank without ceasing, thinking that he had never before tasted water, choking as he swallowed too quickly, greedily devouring the warm, sweet, mineral laden _life_ which it brought. He drank until his stomach was distended and hurt.

"I told you a solution would present itself!" Qui Gon joyfully bellowed at him, one hand shaking his shoulder.

"Yes, master!" he shouted back, over the roar of the monsoon downpour. This was _ridiculous._ "This is quite a solution!" The Force was in a dramatic mood, it would seem.

"The water bags," Qui Gon reminded him, and they set to. The empty skins were filled in no time. They simply held the openings beneath a bough of the bramble bushes until the runoff had swelled the sacks to fullness again. The rain eventually lessened in its power, though it continued to gently fall. The pack began a kind of dance, a slow circling ritual of thanksgiving, and then settled down again as the curtains of water gently transformed to a warm mist. The heat now wrapped them in a cocoon of relief, and they lay sopping and content, as the cloud laden sky lightened again to a giddy, wheeling blue.


	17. Chapter 17

**Call of the Wild**

* * *

**Chapter 17**

* * *

Gerroo scented it first.

A moment later, every one of the pack was wide awake, rigid with anticipation. Thousands of glittering droplets still stood in Raoo's shaggy mane as he lifted his head into the sluggish breeze. The rain had flooded the grasslands; many things which had hidden from the heat in burrows and deep nests beneath the surface now slithered and walked openly on the plains, seeking new refuges. Now, before they again went to ground, was the time to hunt. The moon hung pregnant in the sky, casting much light upon the grasslands. The clan might survive. Judgment had found them worthy after all.

Eager to begin, Gerroo nudged at Fleetwind. He was not scenting the wind like the pack, but lay with his body pressed against the ground, one ear smashed flat into the rock on which they camped. His pup crouched nearby, the top part of his face creased into small lines.

"Are you sure, master?" he asked. His infant mane sparkled with thousands of captured droplets, too, and the gathered moisture streamed off his back and shoulders in criss-crossing rivulets, carving odd patterns in the remaining layer of white mud.

"Sadly, yes," the alpha cloud grunted. He raised his eyes to Gerroo, and she felt the unwelcome touch of his mind again. This time the invading image was of a thunder-lizard, a great one, slinking across the grasses in search of prey. Her hackles rose: danger.

"If that is true, the Trandoshans will not be far behind. Do you remember the trophy hall on Melios? They had a rancor head displayed there, and several other monsters as well. A gundark would be an enticing prize for them. It isn't safe for the pack to hunt."

The alpha rose to his feet and gazed at the pack milling about the forbidden and tainted watering hole, dredging up their last strength for a final sortie.. "If they do not hunt, they will starve and perish, Obi Wan. It is now or never."

"What happened to patience?"

"Patience awaits the right moment, Padawan. And we have come to it. We shall accompany the hunt and protect them as best we can. Beyond that , I cannot say. If there is a gundark prowling these lands, I hope not to encounter it."

Gerroo heard these words, but could not unravel their meaning. Why were they delaying? It was time to hunt! Whatever danger lurked upon the grasses could not be greater than that posed by hunger. Nothing would keep her clan from seeking food now. At the leader's command, the best runners – those who still had strength left in their limbs, the fastest and most cunning – broke away and spread over the northern land in a scouting pattern. The two clouds joined the following pack, running in the midst of it but staying close to one another.

The foremost scouts scented sharp-tusks, but the hunters passed these by; the pack never tangled with sharp-tusks, for it was against Raoo's Law. Far distant a herd of springers had ventured out to graze upon the parched remnants of a field- but the runners were too weak to catch springers. Even at their fittest, only the fleetest of the young males could hope to overtake one of the long-legged beasts, and then only when their prey was taken by surprise. The pack loped onward, calling to one another to mark their positions, to exchange news of what lay ahead. As they ran, the clouds once again gathered and the sky shook with terrible thunder. Cringing, they awaited the downpour, which was not long in coming. Soon the sky was streaked with driving water, pummeling them into the ground with its torrential power. Nothing could be seen or heard, not even the packmate a mere ka-arrak away. When the rain lessened, they ran on, desperate to find food. If this expedition came back with its mouths empty, the clan would starve. They must succeed or perish.

So blindly they ran, in the spattering rain, panting with exhaustion, their bodies now betraying them. They stopped once to drink at a swell in the land where water gathered, and they pulled their paws through the sweet mud and counted one another by touch, shaking the water out of their fur only have it soaked though again a moment later.

And then, as they stood easing their limbs and catching their wheezing breaths, a howl pierced their ears. Not a howl of the pack; this was a blood-curdling noise, a dreadful screech of fury. It was a thunder lizard. Scent-blind and sight-blind, they had not felt its approach. Perhaps even the cloud strangers were tiring, losing their unnatural mind powers. But there was no time to consider this, for out of the mist and the dark rain emerged the head and shoulders of a mighty red death-dealer. The thunder lizard screamed in hungry rage, displaying teeth stained ochre with gore – and pounced straight at Gerroo.

Slipping desperately in the mud, she knew her life was ended; but before the crushing jaws could close round her body, a sweep of emerald fire flashed in the night, and the thunder lizard recoiled, a burning line carved into its scaly lip. The tips of two incisors rattled into the mud beside Gerroo. And there stood Fleetwind, the skyfire in his hand sizzling horribly as rain spattered upon its glowing edges. Wild steam rose round him, and the mighty beast turned full upon this new foe, tail lashing.

Gerroo heard Raoo's war-cry, and heard her packmates rushing the monster's flanks. They dug into scaled flesh where they could, hanging on with strong jaws while the great lizard writhed and shuddered, casting them off like bothersome gnats. Their teeth left but small dents in its armored hide. Howling and calling out their war-cries, their solemn battle oaths, the pack renewed its charge, only to be swept aside by giant claws.

The thunder lizard roared and slammed its enormous forelegs into the mud, spattering Gerroo as she lunged vainly for its neck. Her teeth grazed against its thick skin, but found no purchase, and she slid into the churning slime beneath its feet. A claw descended to crush her but the green skyfire again slashed in a screaming blaze, severing the claw in two, leaving a fiery scar across the toes above it. The thunder lizard's answering snarl was deeper than the anger sounding overhead in the clouds, and its mighty arm lashed sideways, catching Fleetwind in the chest and sending him flying. He landed skidding upon the sopping turf, leaving a trail of spray in his wake.

"Master!" Lodestone's voice screamed, cutting across thunder and the drumming of rain. Gerroo tripped and struggled in the mud, slewing round to avoid the monster's rage. She saw a packmate snapped between its furious jaws, scented blood, heard the awful death cries. The killer threw its head upward and let loose another deafening howl. Gerroo stumbled upon the body of a pack mate, slipped again, and then gaped as the cloud-pup leapt impossibly high, straight onto the thunder-lizard's back, just behind its head. The beast screamed and shook, but Lodestone did not let go or lose balance. He rolled in the air, once, and came down atop the thing's skull, burying his blue skyfire deep into its brain with a sure and savage strength.

Thunder rocked the ground and the great lizard shrieked out its death call, its body flailing wildly in its agony, sending great waves of mud and gore over the remaining hunters. Gerroo was caught by a spasming limb and sent tumbling away, breath knocked from her lungs. She heard Lodestone land nearby, his body hitting the soft mud with a skidding squelch, his breath coming in a hard grunt. The monster collapsed at last, crimson pouring from its mouth and slatted nostrils, diluted to a swirling eddy of scarlet in the flowing rainwater.

Gerroo heaved in a shaking breath, rasping against bruised ribs, and tottered to her feet. Not far away the cloud-pup struggled to his feet, too, and then scrabbled urgently across the slick grass to the prone form of his alpha. The hunters gathered and sniffed tentatively at the monstrous corpse, at the bodies of their own who had fallen beneath it its onslaught. Soon calls of mourning blended with the retreating thunder. Raoo barked sharply, calling them to order and present need. Runners were sent to retrieve the rest of the pack.

They had felled the thunder-lizard, and now they would eat of it. This was the Way.


	18. Chapter 18

**Call of the Wild**

* * *

**Chapter 18**

* * *

"Master! Qui Gon!"

"I'm … all right." The Jedi master raised a hand to ward off his apprentice's searching fingers. "A bruised side… stop fretting." _Force,_ had he really been so foolhardy as to attack hunger-crazed gundark? "Obi Wan – help the pack –"

"It's dead, master. Let me help you."

Qui Gon grunted and let the Padawan gently lever him upright. He released a slow breath, dispelling his pain into the Force. _Bruised side_ might well be a gross understatement, but there would be time to deal with that later. The monsoon rain was thinning again, leaving nought but a sprinkle of warm moisture in the air. He wiped mud out of his eyes and beard. There was blood, too, but he did not think it was his own."Padawan."

"Just a scrape." The young Jedi wiped at the red trickle on his forearm. "Hold still." He fumbled in his belt pouches and came up with a thin plasti-seal bandage. "That's no good…" A sigh of frustration. "We're out of supplies. I don't know what –"

Qui Gon pushed his hand away again and leaned heavily on his shoulder instead, hauling himself upright with a choice Malastarian curse.

"I haven't heard that one before," Obi Wan inquired as they staggered into some semblance of balance and stood sopping in the drizzling night air.

"You can look it up with a translator next chance you get," Qui Gon replied dryly, as they limped their way toward the waiting pack. At the look of alarm his halting gait inspired, he added, "I'll be fine. A few hours' sleep and a healing trance… but for now it appears that we are to eat."

He was right. the pack alpha and the others waited expectantly, slavering with hunger as they stood round the fallen gundark's carcass. Qui Gon eyed the smoking lightsaber wound in the top of its skull. "I see," he muttered. "You brought down the kill. By their custom, you must eat first."

"What?" Obi Wan froze beneath him.

"Eat, Padawan. They will not partake of the meal until you do so. That is their Way. And we are all starving."

Obi Wan looked at the slain gundark with a peculiar mixture of trepidation and revulsion, far more powerful emotions than that which the living threat had engendered. He shook his head mutinously. "No, master! _No. Absolutely not."_

Qui Gon slipped his arm out from his apprentice's supporting grasp and stood swaying on the spot. "Good. Off you go." He pushed at the small of his Padawans' back with one hand.

"But-!"

"Now. That is a direct order."

Likely enough it was the pain in his voice that quashed any further argument. Qui Gon watched as ObI Wan made his scowling way forward to the dead gundark's side. Looking green, the young Jedi hefted his saber again and quickly cut through the outer skin, leaving a searing incision which he opened further with a gentle tug of the Force. Beneath, the raw red fibers of the meat glistened, dusted with fresh droplets of rain. The stench was… rich, and caused the pack members to moan in eagerness. Obi Wan's shoulders tensed as he sliced the flesh again, and then reached into the mess to withdraw a tiny scrap of hot, semi-blistered meat, holding it delicately between thumb and forefinger. He took a bite, tearing the flesh away with his teeth, chewing very deliberately and then swallowing.

Raoo barked some command, and the pack fell to with a healthy appetite, rending and tearing at the feast with hungry jaws. The pups cavorted among their elders' feet, joyfully snapping up the scraps and leavings of the others' riotous indulgence. Qui Gon sank to the earth and waited patiently until his apprentice returned, grimacing in distaste as he carried a sizeable chunk of mostly raw, stinking gundark flesh in his hands. The noise of the pack's revels was undeniably disgusting, so he focused on the rain and the throbbing pain in his side to distract himself from the revolting spectacle. Other members of the pack began to drift toward the banquet, mothers carrying pups between their teeth, the elderly and the weak. Soon the gundark's corpse was a mountain of hungry fur, and the mingled smell of fresh meat and wet fur and blood-smeared mud was inescapable.

"I tried to burn it with the saber," Obi Wan apologized, offering Qui Gon his share. "It's repulsive. I'm sorry, master."

"You have no future as a chef," the older Jedi remarked, tearing at the unappetizing meal with his teeth. Decades of training enabled him to consume his portion without thought to his immediate gag reflex. After all, starvation was unacceptable. "But you will be happy to hear that gundark meat does not harbor many harmful bacteria due to a peculiarity of the species' organic chemistry."

"Truly?" the Padawan said, relief evident in his eyes.

"No," Qui Gon admitted, quirking a lopsided grin. "…But I thought you would be happy to hear it."


	19. Chapter 19

**Call of the Wild**

* * *

**Chapter 19**

* * *

When the pack was sated, Raoo called for them to depart. Already a great cloud of scavengers circled overhead, and untold hordes of insects crawled eagerly among the ruins of the gundark's bones and innards. The pack would leave this debris behind, as tribute to the lands. This was the Way. Those gifted with the power to kill must leave behind sustenance for those less powerful, so that all might share life together under the sun. The pack was slick with mud and the red stains of feasting, and their bellies hung heavy below their ribs for the first time since the Judgment began. In slow procession they made their way further northward, pressing on toward the Circle of Ancestors. The wind carried tidings of danger still, of mysterious foes closing in behind them.

The exiled clouds limped near the back of the line now. Gerroo could smell the older one's injury. He wrapped one foreleg about the younger and stumbled on his hind feet beside him. She wondered at this. When a pack member was injured this badly, in flight, he would have to be abandoned, just as they had left behind the six that had fallen to the thunder lizard. This was the Way, the law of strength. Those who could not, did not. But the two strangers had their own Way, it would seem. The younger, rather than claiming alpha status for himself as was natural, would rather join in his elder's misery, carrying him under the beating sun without complaint. But she knew already that these two were intertwined, more invisibly even than the blood-bonded pack. They Dreamed together, and she could see by their subtle motions and interchanges that their minds were yoked, that the pup felt some of the alpha's pain.

So she paced behind them, guarding the rear of the line. It was slow going, for they moved now with the entire clan, and many were weary after eating and many were too young for a sustained run, and there mothers waiting for litters late in the season, their bellies round with young, and there were elders of the pack, still strong enough to hunt but walking with stiff limbs over slippery terrain. The rain came and went, and washed away the gore of eating, but the clouds lingered in the sky, veiling the sun and promising another storm.

At long last they crested the last swell in the land, where the grass gave way to bareness and there was little to hunt and only small pools of water amid the rocky clefts. This marked the end of the grasslands and the end of their Law. At the edge of the forbidden places, on the brink of the unknown, where no scent trail had ever been laid by the pack, stood the Circle. The stones rose upright, some leaning, others straight and erect, enclosing the sacred space. A mighty slab, a piece of the mountains half-fallen from the heights, jutted forth to protect the Circle from clouds and stars. Here, on occasion, the Ancestors would speak to a shaman, one of those who did not run with the pack but lived deep in the Dreaming. And here the pack would come in time of need. The chiefs were taught this in song, and those who were wise remembered it. They all hurried forward now, eager to reach safety. The unknown enemies would not dare to attack them here, where the Law ended. Such folly was beyond any mortal creature under the sun.

Geroo entered the Circle reverently, touching her nose to each of the Stones: Trial, Victory, Dawn, Twilight, Birth, Death, Moon, Sun, Song, Law, Running, Sleeping, and the cloven Time. Her people lay down inside the sheltering ring, the long shadows of these Pillars falling over them. Here the warmth of day heated the rock beneath their paws and dried their sopping coats. Steam rose from fur and ruff. She watched from the entrance as mothers and the youngest pups and the elderly shuffled their way between the Greeting stones which leaned together to form the sacred Door. The entire pack was assembled within, but Raoo did not give the call of Welcome yet. He stood respectfully waiting, too – waiting for the lagging clouds to finish the journey. They had fallen behind, the alpha slowing his paces throughout the march until the two of them staggered forward like one creature, all entangled, arms wrapped about each other and legs moving in slow unison.

When they haltingly crossed the threshold, the cloud pup seemed to lose his strength, and slid to the rock floor, still vainly trying to support his alpha's weight. They ended on their knees just inside the Greeting Stones, their heads bent together, nearly touching, their breath hard in their throats. Raoo nodded, and bellowed the deep call of Welcome, his voice resounding off every stone, fracturing into a chorus. The clan relaxed then, milling about the inside of the circle, finding places to rest and ease their bodies, to sing and speak softly among themselves.

Gerroo watched the two clouds make one last effort, struggling back to their feet in one shared motion. They crept, one painful step at a time, across the stones, and found the hollowed recess between the Pillar of Time and that of Trial. Into this rounded concavity they both dropped, less than gracefully. She padded forward and gazed upon them. Fleetwind now lay on his back, one hand pressed against his side. Lodestone knelt rigidly beside him, as though guarding. Gerroo felt it in the touch of his mind: a fierce protectiveness, like the blue skyfire he wielded. He turned to look at her, an image flashing across her imagination unbidden. It was a plea for help, a question. She saw other strangers like these, beings of many kinds, which helped the hurts of others. She saw many soft long-fingered paws, and felt a gentleness, and with this unfamiliar suggestion came a vague questioning. Were there any among her people who cured the hurts of others? Who had a skill such as this?

Gerroo licked her jaws, ill at ease. This was a difficult thing he asked. Confused, she withdrew a short space and sat upon her haunches, thinking. The injured suffered or grew better according to the Way. Others did not interfere with this. She thought perhaps this notion of his was more forbidden sorcery, but he had killed the thunder lizard and was now a hero of her people. She swept her tail side to side, fretting over the puzzle.

_I will bring Oowah to you,_ she decided at long last. The eldest, and wisest for understanding the Way, she might help. Oowah did not run with a pack, neither Raoo's nor any other cheiftain's upon the plains. She dwelt here among the wastelands, among the Stones. She was custodian of the Ancestors' songs, and she saw and scented things in the Dreaming, though her eyes were blind with age.

The cloud pup's forehead crinkled, but he nodded and made a gesture with his hands, perhaps indicating urgency. She dipped her head once, as she had seen them do when they meant to salute one another, and she trotted away. Oowah would be near, wrapped in Dreaming. She would be keen to meet these strangers who were so much like herself, anyway. Gerroo quickened her pace. Oowah might even be able to speak to the clouds in their minds – to find out about the foes lurking beyond. And then the pack would have some answers. Perhaps.


	20. Chapter 20

**Call of the Wild**

* * *

**Chapter 20**

* * *

"Master…. I think Ghe-Ru has gone to find help."

Qui Gon Jinn released a long breath without opening his eyes. "Ghe-Ru?"

"That's her name, as best I can say it. I can make out some of their language now- names and a few phrases – though I'm not sure what it all means."

The Jedi master smiled weakly. "You're a natural." His Padawan had an affinity for languages; and loved to annoy his master by reciting long passages from classical Twi"Lek epics or Old Publican tractates in a dry academic tone. Qui Gon supposed the addition of guttural snarls and yelps to his apprentice's arsenal of subtle mischief could do no harm.

Obi Wan's hands were gently prodding at his bruised side again. Qui Gon grasped the young Jedi's wrist. "Don't. You'll exhaust yourself."

The muscles beneath his fingers tensed. "Let me try again, master. Please."

Another long exhalation. Internal injuries. He was sure of it now. "You must acknowledge limits, young one." He squeezed a little, conveying regret. "You've done all you can for now."

Obi Wan yanked his hand away. Silence.

The Force flowed churned and swelled here, in a strange pattern, a gathering of potentialities, a magnetic center. Qui Gon let it flow over him, around him. A vergence, here among these stones.

"Why won't you let me heal you?" Obi Wan asked, keeping his voice deliberately low and level. The seething Force betrayed his thoughts, of course, but he managed the surface deception masterfully.

"Do you feel this place?" Qui Gon asked, instead of answering directly. His voice rasped, which was unfortunate.

"Master!" Obi Wan's alarm blended into the confused currents, a spreading stain.

"This is a vergence, Padawan. A place of power… and imbalance."

"You are changing the topic, master. Let me –"

"Enough." He could feel his Padawan's nerves raked raw by the unfamiliar sensation, his teeth set on edge, his tension translating across their bond as _anxiety_ on Qui Gon's behalf. And he was done arguing the point. He shifted, grunting in acute discomfort. "Listen to me. Go outside the stones. Walk. _Think._ Breathe. The pack may need you soon… the Trandoshans will not be far behind. You must center yourself and prepare. These people need your strength and skill more than I do right now. You must put their needs before your own."

"I'm not leaving you! I can help!"

Here, in this place where shadow edged onto luminance, where the Force crested and rose in perpetual motion, weakness became strength, driving need. Attachment was dangerous. "_No," _ he said sharply, letting his pain color the command.

"I _am_ capable."

"Obi Wan." Here, authority bled into power, intimacy into dominance. "Your duty is to protect the innocent."

The Padawan backed away then, obedient and resentful in equal measure. The pack flattened their ears and whimpered as he passed among them, the ripple of displeasure emanating off his presence palpable even to them, within this place of vergence. He disappeared into the twilight, the rising moon momentarily outlining him in silver as he strode through the Door,

Qui Gon sighed deeply, and closed his eyes.

* * *

Outside the Stones, the very air seemed to slacken, to shudder in relief. Obi Wan cast his face upward, exhaling as tiny droplets moistened his cheeks and chin and settled in his hair. The light of day was dimmed again by grey cloud, an ominous ceiling stretching to every horizon. The threat of renewed downpour brewed northward, traveling over the ragged mountains beyond the grasslands. There the sky was black as night. Southward, the sky was clotted with dark specks, with swarms of birds circling and calling over the slain gundark, a mighty pillar of frenzied hunger reaching into the sky, a signal as clear as smoking fire. That was not good; but there was nothing to be done about it. He scrubbed two hands over his face wearily as thunder echoed about the ramparts of the world.

He smiled wryly, kneeling down amid the damp planes of stone. Starvation and heat and murderous scavenging insect swarms and internecine strife and hungry gundarks and – his imagination darkly inserted – flash flooding, disease, wildfires, Force knew what else. This world presented so many delightful options, it was like the menu at a gourmet Coruscanti restaurant. With an injured Qui Gon for garnish and bloodthirsty Trandoshan bounty hunters for dessert.

He forced his mind away from the food metaphor. The raw gundark meat was sitting uneasily in his stomach, and he suppressed a thrill of nausea for the hundredth time that long day. Of course, that might simply be a side effect of the strange Stone circle. He could feel it behind him, solemn and ancient and disquieting. Raised in the light of the Jedi Temple, he found the murkiness of the Force in this place distinctly unsettling. No wonder the pack members approached it with reverence and superstition, their hackles rising as they entered. Perhaps they sensed faintly that which he felt as an oppressive fullness and tension between opposites.

With a colossal effort, he banished his anxiety about Qui Gon's condition to the outer rims of awareness. He _did _have a dity which took precedence. The pack's survival was in his hands now. The natives had no idea what waited for them just over the horizon. Their experience had never yet encompassed foes armed with advanced weapons and an ingrained cunning that recognized no Laws of the plains. Survival. That was indeed the goal; and while some might say that demanded an intense and narrow focus on the present moment, Obi Wan gave himself permission to disagree. Survival demanded a reversal of fortunes, an almost aggressive counter-strategy. The Trandoshans were more than an enemy – they were a potential asset. They had ships, comm. equipment, medical supplies, food. They were his and Qui Gon's only available means of escape from this predicament.

His hand settled on his saber hilt. He would be patient, as Qui Gon had commanded so many times. But when the hunters were foolish enough to finally make an appearance, they would get more than they bargained for.


	21. Chapter 21

**Call of the Wild**

* * *

**Chapter 21**

* * *

Gerroo followed Oowah back to the Circle. Though the white-whiskered old crone was stiff in the legs, and blind, she knew every nook and dip of the ground, every jutting piece of rock, every gnarled root twisting underfoot. She saw without seeing, they said. She walked in the Dreaming, and did not need her eyes. Gerroo accepted the truth of these sayings because they had been handed down in Song for generations. Before Oowah there had been another shaman of the Circle- another even older and whiter than Oowah. And when Oowah joined the Ancestors, then another would take her place. The Dreaming always called one to this place, to this wisdom.

They encountered the cloud-pup first, for he was sitting on his haunches a short distance otside the Circle itself, his eyes closed. Oowah turned blind, blue-grey ghostly eyes upon Gerroo, questioning.

_The younger of the strangers, _ Gerroo explained. _Descended from the sky. He is the_ _thunder lizard_-_slayer_;_ skyfire is his claw. _ _He dreams while waking and commands things to rise off the earth without touching. He also makes fire and creates sorcery in the mud with a stick. But I think he is of the Way._

Oowah approached the pup slowly, and waited for him to open his eyes. When he did, she nudged at his face softly, making him sneeze again. Then he raised two hands, and laid them against Oowah's face. They stood thus, touching and staring at each other for a long time, while Gerroo grew more and more impatient. She sat, and licked her jaws, wondering if perhaps they shared a Dreaming, some silent communion which was hidden from her.

Finally Oowah turned back to Gerroo. _He is of the Way,_ she decided in a hoarse growl.

_Is he a cloud? _ Gerroo wondered.

_No, _ the wise one laughed. _Not a cloud. Something else. He does not know the Law; and yet he follows the Way. He comes from a strange place, far away, beyond the clouds even. His pack has hunting fields which extend through the stars. His people are protectors of the Way. You need not fear them- yet he tells me that enemies are following, enemies also from above the clouds, seeking to kill this one and his alpha. _

Gerroo's hackles stood. She recalled the horrible traps in the eastern plain and the poisoned watering hole. _More like them? Wielders of skyfire?_

Oowah's ears flattened. _No. Serpent people, ones who disdain the Way and seek to kill without eating. They have come to hunt these strangers who run with your pack; and they will slay you all if they must._

_Are they sorcerers?_ Geroo inquired, a thrum of warning building deep in her chest. Though she felt tenderness toward Lodestone, Raoo would never agree to have part in a sorcerer's battle, a war between breakers of the Law.

But Oowah shook her shaggy head vigorously. _No. The serpent people are lowborn blaspheming earth-crawlers, nothing more. And these two…_ she paused, and glanced sideways at the cloud-pup again, thoughtfully…_I think they are shamans._

_There is something else I do not understand, _Gerroo added, running her tongue nervously over her jaws again. _His alpha was injured in the hunting of the great beast. But Lodestone here will not accept this judgment. He asks for arts and practices I do not know._

At this, Oowah turned once again to the young stranger_._ Again he touched his soft paws to her snout, and there was a lengthy silence. When at last Oowah spoke again, her voice was a soft growl. _The other is his sire, I think. He howls for this one in the Dreaming, where you cannot hear it. But I must see this older one for myself. Take me to him._

Lodestone stood, then, and casting his fierce blue gaze ahead into the shadowed Circle, he led the way, Geroo and the ancient shaman padding behind. They threaded their way up the hard slope and through the Door. As Oowah passed within the ring of stones, clan members dipped their head to her or hastily scuttled out of the way. Some respected Oowah, others feared her. The pups watched her pass with wide eyes and their infant manes fluffed in terror. Raoo observed her passionlessly, his dark watchful eyes noting her presence, but showing neither fear nor respect. The pack alpha did not know the Dreaming; but he obeyed the Law, and tolerated her presence among his people.

* * *

Obi Wan knelt. "Master. Master, here. Ghe-Ru brought… someone you should meet." He scolded himself, noting that his hands shook slightly as he levered Qui Gon upright, propped the tall man's broad back against his chest. The Jedi master's skin was hot to the touch, slick with perspiration.

A hand brushed against his. "I'm fine."

He snorted, knowing this was far from true, knowing that the statement was not even remotely intended to deceive. Control. He tightened his mental shields, as though he could hide his alarm from Qui Gon, as though his façade would fool anyone here, except maybe Ghe-Ru.

The shaman called Oowah stepped forward, thrust her white nose against Qui Gon's face. The Jedi did not draw back. He allowed the ancient one to snuffle at his hair, his face, his flesh. She licked at the place beneath his ribs where ugly scarlet and black bruising spread like slow poison, and he flinched a little. Obi Wan flinched, too. He couldn't help it.

"She can feel the Force, master."

"I sense it. What do they call her?"

"Ooh-wan, I think," the Padawan supplied. "Or something like that. It's a title, though – an honorific. I can't be sure."

The blind wolf nudged forward further, until she and the two Jedi stood as close together as the leaning Stones of Time and Trial, a conspiracy of Dreamers, a pack formed of bonds more primordial than bloodline. Gerroo waited outside this Circle, tail dragging fretfully behind her, tongue tracing over her jaws.

Obi Wan stirred first. "Master," he half whispered in Qui Gon's ear. "She knows a place, in the hills here. Can you see the image? There is a grass. I think it's naricillin. She has eaten it when ill, and it healed her. But it's high in the rocks. I'll have to go alone; it's too hard a climb for these people, and I'll be faster anyway."

Qui Gon sighed painfully. "The bounty hunters?"

"They aren't near yet. I'll be back soon. I'm going to do this, master."

Oowah withdrew a pace, blind eyes staring at them somberly.

"What if I forbid you to go?"

The young Jedi tightened his hold, lowering his forehead to rest against Qui Gon's filthy shoulder. _I'll go anyway, without your permission if I must._ In this place of vergence, where the Force overflowed the bounds of time and place, he borrowed the strength and conviction of some future self. "You would not command me to break my Padawans' oath," he murmured.

Qui Gon's chuckle was a dry flutter of breath. _Stubborn brat._ "Be cautious," he rasped.


	22. Chapter 22

**Call of the Wild**

* * *

**Chapter 22**

* * *

The rain politely waited until he was well out in the open, far from the Stones, and fully exposed to the elements on a sheer cliff face. Only when it was thus assured that he was completely at its mercy did it launch the next attack, pummeling him with an unending sheet of monsoon downpour. It was impossible to see, nearly impossible to breathe in the onslaught, the water falling in torrents from the glowering clouds above. His handholds and footholds grew slick, and the rock face ran with cascades of rain, waterfalls plummeting a hundred meters down onto hard fragments and twisted roots below.

Obi Wan decided not to look over his shoulder any longer. He curled his torn fingers and toes into the tiny cracks in the rock, and called on the Force to help keep him in place. He knew it would be impossible to remain hanging here, deadweight, for very long. He was too tired, and the storm wind might rise again, prying him off the cliff with casual power. To go down again would be to squander all the effort he had already poured into this quest; only a few meters higher and he might be able to cast his cable launcher over the lip of the projecting slab above, and thus ascend to its heights. The massive stone jutted out over the lanscape below like the prow of an ancient ship. Only an arachnid could scale it freehand, inverted above a fathomless drop.

Painstakingly, he crawled upward the remainder of the way, and wedged himself against an irregular cleft in the wall, bracing against its two narrow sides with his legs. His muscles trembled slightly with the sustained effort, an alarming sign. The cable launcher was slick in his palm, but he adjusted his grip and squinted upward against the driving rain. The edge was not clearly visible through the smearing sheets of water, but the Force guided his aim. The cable snaked up and over the ledge, connecting to something with a muffled click. He gave the line an experimental tug and it held fast. But a trickle of warning fluttered against his mind, so he pulled harder and then harder, until the grappling end came loose and slipped over the edge again. He retracted it and tried again, heart pounding. Patience and caution, _always._ Three more attempts and he was finally satisfied that the line would hold his weight.

Grasping the thin cable with both hands, he swung out into space, his aching legs relieved to hang free. Now began the arduous ascent. The cable retractor pulled him up slowly, the tiny gear struggling to find purchase against the water-slicked cable. He hung on doggedly, creeping up the cable hand over hand as the wind buffeted him side to side and sent him spinning in wide circles at the end of his tether. When he reached the protruding ledge, he pulled himself over with an inelegant scrabble and heave.

There, upon the flat summit, he could see the northern hills spread out below him, a jagged mess of peaks and gulleys topped by ice in their far reaches. Underfoot succulents crunched; and in the shelter of huge boulders grew a delicate flowering herb. The rain parted its curtains, allowing a brief shower of light to pick these out in golden effulgence, and then veiled all in mist and darkness again.

Obi Wan plucked the wild plant and stowed it roughly in a belt pouch, not caring that the fragrant leaves were crushed and left a sticky residue on his hands. He stood, wiping his palms on his soaking trousers, and looked skyward, to the horizon. The planet's slow rotation had brought them to nightfall once again. Lightning flashed among the distant peaks, and a moment later, thunder shook the air. Sighing, he peered over the edge of the mighty cliff he had just ascended. He could rappel down partway and then climb the rest. But he needed to rest first. And he needed food – better food than raw gundark.

A scattering of flat fungi caught his attention. He reached into the Force, seeking for a sign of warning. But no suggestion of danger came to him, so he plucked one from its mooring and nibbled on its edge. Its flavor was disgusting, bitter and dirty at once. He spat it out again, aware that had Qui Gon been here he most likely would have extolled the vile thing's nutritive properties and recommended its consumption in vast quantities. There were, it would seem, certain advantages to independence. Obi Wan left the fungus where it lay, wondering how people such as the Nemoidians subsisted almost exclusively on fungal diets. His stomach growled stridently, taking Qui Gon's imagined part in the argument, and a clap of thunder sounded directly overhead, as though in angry retort.

Never mind. Qui Gon's needs outweighed his own by a hundredfold. Rest could wait. Gritting his teeth and marshalling his reserves, he backed to the edge of the precipice, cable grasped loosely between two hands, and dropped gracefully over the edge.

A motion in his peripheral vision, and a surge in the Force, told him to dodge – and he did, ducking as a spinning metallic disk passed within a hands-width of his face. Grasping the cable with one hand, he snatched his 'saber hilt with the other and flicked the blade into life. Rain sizzled on the blue edge, and steam rose in a bright halo as he swung at the deadly flying disk returning toward him in a tight loop. A meter across, it appeared as a blur of motion, nothing more than the angry buzz of a rotating blade that kept it aloft. A small central hub housed the engine. His blade sliced viciously at the device as it passed, but it flipped sideways with the speed of thought and evaded his strike.

Heart hammering, the Force rushing in his veins, he let the cable out more quickly, slewing round as he kicked his legs over his head and wrapped the taut line twice around both ankles. The thin mesh dug into his boots and held fast. Dangling upside down, but with both arms free and a full range of motion, he twisted hard into the next assault, 'saber blazing. The speeding disk turned and targeted him again, the high hum of its blades promising a swift and bloody death should it so much as graze him. He angled his weapon across his body, ignoring the driving rain, ignoring the fact that he was completely inverted over a fathomless drop. The thing sped nearer, and he moved with it, cutting with his saber in a tight arc as he swung at the end of the cable. His blade caught the spinning whirl squarely. In an explosion of heat and shrapnel, the wicked machine shattered and fell smoking into the depths. Sparks buried themselves in his shoulders and chest, and he hissed, awkwardly clipping his saber back in place and curling upward to free his ankles.

Danger resounded in the Force; he was barely aware of the remainder of his descent, an urgent need to return to the pack and Qui Gon pushing him back along the trail he had followed at double-time.

Halfway down the path at the hills' base, he heard the hum of the second seeking disk. Panting, he brought his saber into guard position again, closing his eyes. In the dusk and the rain, he knew full well that the Force would be a better guide than vision. The deadly spinning projectile hummed closer, the whine of its engine increasing in pitch as it approached. He snarled, stepped into the attack, swung and felt it slip to the side of his blow, reverse direction, and come back at his feet. He somersaulted over it, rolled and blocked its return flight with a long upright strike. The enemy looped over him and came down again, thin edge spinning madly straight at his head. He slashed and rolled again, hearing the _thunk_ of the saw-like blades smashing into the hard ground, carving a gash in the packed soil. He held out a hand, Force-pinned it, and leapt forward to bury his 'saber in the central engine casing. Like the other one, its exploded in a fiery ball that sent him tumbling backward. Bits of burning debris landed around him, smoking ominously in the rain.

He picked himself up with a hearty curse, gathered his remaining strength, and ran full tilt the rest of the way to the Circle of Stones.


	23. Chapter 23

**Call of the Wild**

* * *

**Chapter 23**

* * *

Gerroo stayed near the feverish alpha stranger, warding off the impertinent stares and curious sniffs of her fellow clanmates. Outside the sheltered Circle, rain thundered down, visible as a twinkling curtain of mingled light and shadow between the black pillars of the Stones. Distant explosions rolled in the hills to the north, prophesying a skyfire storm to come. Such was the customary dance of the season: Judgment, rain, and then skyfire, to purify the lands and herald a new cycle. Raoo paced the perimeter of the ring, snuffling at each of his clan members, his majestic head hanging low in thought.

Fleetwind stirred and muttered, words Gerroo did not understand. She licked his face, finding his salty sweat now tasted of illness, of festering wounds, of anxiety. She whined her discovery to Oowah, but the ancient blind one seemed unperturbed; she merely padded across the short space and prodded her nose against him as though seeking his attention. One soft hand came up and gripped in her ruff.

_Where is the smaller one?_ Oowah demanded, unseeing gaze traveling over the dark forms of the Stones. _He has been gone long, and this one sees danger for him in the Dreaming._

Gerroo coughed and stood, shaking out the moisture in her fur. _I know not,_ she barked, irritably. _He is not my pup, that I should know his comings and goings._

Oowah's hackles rippled briefly, and she turned her back, nudging gently at Fleetwind's side. He tried to push her away, but she seized his hand between her teeth, as one would warn a recalcitrant pup, and he ceased his protestations. The shaman of the pack thrummed deep in her throat, a guttural rumbling of concern, and continued her ministrations. Gerroo watched, dubiously. What use was there in fretting over an injury? What was done was done.

Presently, Fleetwind and Oowah started in unison, the old one's ears perking toward the Door, and the stranger rising unsteadily onto the crooks of his forepaws, the top of his face crumpled into thin lines. Gerroo stood also, expectant.

Through the Door stepped Lodestone, water dripping off his infant mane and his leg coverings in sopping trails. His breathing was rapid, and he crossed the silent circle almost at a hunter's run, the heads of the pack turning to regard him in undisguised curiosity. He came directly to Fleetwind, dripping a puddle on the hard floor at his side, spattering droplets over him.

"Master," he gasped, sinking to his knees and forepaws, chest heaving.

Fleetwind sighed in relief and said some words in their language. The pup shook his head vigorously, and fumbled in the pouches at his middle, bringing forth the crushed leaves of some wild grass. Oowah growled in approval at this, and barked out a sharp command. Then Lodestone moved behind the alpha, pushing him upward a little, coaxing and cajoling. With a dry rasping sound, the elder took the bruised leaves and folded one into his mouth, chewing it with his small, flat teeth. Oowah watched, encouraging him to work his way through the entire handful of herbs, slapping her paw upon the hard stone floor whenever he paused in his eating.

As he chewed, Lodestone rattled on and on, his words flowing too fast and too softly to be distinguished. Their meaning was not good, however; Gerroo could see the alpha's face crease into deeper lines of worry as the younger one spoke. Oowah's hackles began to rise again, as she shared images with the two strangers in the Dreaming.

_What is it?_ Gerroo demanded, unable to contain herself any longer. _What has Lodestone seen?_

Oowah crouched beside the two strangers, flicking one ear in Gerroo's direction. _New danger,_ she snapped out. _More wickedness from their enemies. The hunters approach; they are afraid for the pack. _

Lodestone made some yipping sound at his alpha, and was answered with a low and muttering protest.

"No, master," Lodestone said. This was a word he made many times in every day. Gerroo could recognize it easily, but she could not tell whether it meant _alpha_ or _path-finder _or _sire._ Their language was mutable, shifting like the clouds.

Oowah yapped smartly at Fleetwind, and with a brief flash of his teeth, he subsided again.

_We should tell Raoo,_ Geroo decided. If there was a threat to the clan, the alpha should know of it. He was the defender of his folk, and the guardian of their Way. He would be the first to meet this threat when it arrived.

_There is time, _ Oowah reassured her. _I will tell Raoo myself. In the meantime, let these two rest. I can see in the Dreaming that the pack will need them. These hunters are not of the Way; we cannot stand alone against them._

Gerroo dipped her head, showing her respect for the shaman's words. Oowah padded away, to seek a private audience with Raoo, leaving her to watch over the two strangers. The elder now leaned heavily backward against the younger, who kept his forepaws circled about Fleetwind's chest. Both their eyes were closed, whether in sleep or in shared Dreaming, Gerroo could not say. Fleetwind's breath rose and fell with the rapidity of grave illness; Lodestone dripped and steamed in the warmth among the Stones; and the rumble of thunder echoed off the pillars of the Circle, warning them of things to come.

Gerroo lay nearby, watchful and waiting.


	24. Chapter 24

**Call of the Wild**

* * *

**Chapter 24**

* * *

Obi Wan woke, sensing the approach of enemies. Around him, blanketed in the shadows of the stones, the pack slumbered. One or two sentinels stood at the Doors, not yet scenting or seeing what the Force so abundantly and clearly communicated to him; and Qui Gon did not stir. Carefully, tenderly, the Padawan extricated himself from what had been – he admitted with a blended pang of alarm and embarrassment – a half-embrace; and when the Jedi master still did not wake, he knelt beside him, taking a moment to pour what little spare energy he had into the tall man's ailing body.

The healing wrung him dry, but it was worth it; he stood, bracing against the pillar of Trial for a moment as vertigo claimed him. But here, in this place of vergence, the Force quickly filled his empty reservoirs, rushing in where exhaustion might otherwise leave a void. It was a heady sensation, and a potentially dangerous one, he knew; Dark and Light coiled together here, inseparable, beckoning to him, inviting utter abandon to either Side.

He breathed deeply and strode away, purpose coalescing into action. The Doors issued him into a night not yet silvered by the moon. The two watching pack members sniffed at his feet as he passed, but asked no questions, baring their throats to him in salute as he swept by.

The night breeze blew down the slopes; Trandoshans would be sure to take advantage of this fact. They might be nearer than he thought, creeping steadily up the slopes of the hills, seeking the pack's trail. It would not be much of a hunt – their prey were holed up at the summit of the rocky incline, conveniently corralled in one place. He slithered and bounded down the skirts of the hills, crouching occasionally behind a lump of fallen stone, or a mangled bush, creeping down toward the plains, where the last grasses lapped against the rocky edges of the hills like waves against a shore.

Ahead, _danger._ Hidden. He flattened himself to the earth and closed his eyes, the Force showing him what his senses could not. Two Trandoshans lurked just over the next rise… armed and waiting. His every muscle stilled into readiness, the crystal in his saber chiming inaudibly within the hilt, the Force resounding low and pure around him, its currents drawn into taut expectation by his resolve, by the mutual anticipation of hunter and hunted.

The reptilians shifted their awareness, momentarily distracted by some skittering thing in the grass nearby. Obi Wan moved forward another meter, gathering himself for a spring. In the plenum, he could make out the cold and lifeless form of a machine behind the two hunters: a skiff or swoop, their vehicle. He sensed the glazed eyes of his enemies sweeping over the depression where he lay, unmoving, cloaked in the Force, throat tightening even as his fingers curled, subtly, about his saber's hilt.

An insect chirruped bleakly in the darkness. A breath, indrawn as softly as the caress of warm wind over his mud-caked back. One of the Trandoshans shifted his weight minutely.

All was still. Quiet.

_Now!_ In an explosion of blue and red light, angry spitting fire and burning noise, the 'saber and two high power blaster rifles blazed into life. Obi Wan sailed overhead, turning in midair, blade sweeping expertly around his body, intercepting the shots. Energy bolts ricocheted off the sizzling blade and slammed into the rain-softened earth, sending up spattering geysers of mud and rock. His boots squelched in the soggy soil as he landed behind the hunter's position, 'saber already whirling, howling loud and shrill as the scaled hunters wheeled about, firing on him at short range. One shot blasted straight back into its originator, sending him sprawling, a shriek of agony splitting the air. The other charged him, a sliver of metal suddenly hurled across the short gap. Obi Wan twisted, narrowly avoiding the throwing shiv's edge. His weapon slashed upward just in time to catch the rifle's last shot before striking downward again to sever the thing in two. The Trandoshan cursed, a hissing imprecation, and swung the useless butt end at his head. He ducked, rolled backward and flung out a hand palm-outward, throwing his foe several meters away.

He had straddled the swoop bike in the next instant, toggling the ignition, revving the delicate repulsordrive, skimming away across the plains at breakneck speed. The Trandoshan cursed him as he fled, his cries soon disappearing into the rush of wind and the hum of the bike's drives.

* * *

He arrived back at the Circle triumphant, bringing the lightweight swoop to a skidding halt outside the ring of stones. The sentinels growled at it, hackles upright, and prowled about it, snuffling hesitantly at its gleaming contours. Obi Wan slipped off, pleased with his prize, with the possibilities it brought.

The Door was blocked by Raoo. The cheiftain growled low in his throat, dark eyes glinting angrily at the machine waiting outside the encampment. Oowah appeared at his shoulder, her white fur dancing softly in the warm night air.

_What undead thing have you brought back here? _The shaman demanded. _This is a sacred place. This sorcery is not welcomed by the Ancestors. _ Raoo thrummed his agreement, shoulders squared in ultimatum.

The young Jedi knelt before Oowah, touching her face, sending an image through the Force, a depiction of himself, astride the swoop, 'saber in hand, descending upon their oncoming foes. He showed her their rifles, the red energy bolts cast across great distances, their hunting skiff with its cannon, the Trandsohans themselves with their disruptor grenades and energy nets. The _need_ for better weapons than tooth and claw, his ability to use these things against the hunters if he could take them.

Oowah shook his Dreaming away, baring her teeth. _You challenge the Law, insolent one. _

Frustrated, aware that the threat could not be far behind him now, Obi Wan tamped down a flare of impatient temper. _I will do what I must,_ he insisted, projecting every bit of his hot determination, baring his teeth right back at her.

Oowah barked out some terse words to Raoo, and snarled her displeasure. _You confound me, young shaman. Raoo has agreed to let the Ancestors decide. Will you Speak with them?_

There was surely no time for this; and yet, it was clear he had little choice. "Yes, fine!" he snapped, aloud, brushing past her to find Qui Gon, to see if the Jedi master had improved.

"Padawan," the tall man whispered.

"Master…. I captured a swoop bike. The Trandoshans are on their way… it won't be long now."

Qui Gon sighed, one hand resting on his apprentice's arm. "I'm sorry," he breathed, painfully. "Obi Wan, you…"

"I can do it," the young Jedi assured him, willing this to be true, his heart thundering in his chest. He _had_ to do it, and he would. He would protect the pack and Qui Gon and find them a way off this untamed and harsh world. He would not fail.

Behind him, the pack shaman growled low. _Come!_ She barked. _You will Speak with the Ancestors now. It is time._

He gripped Qui Gon's hand, once, though whether to give strength or to take it, he did not know. Then he rose and followed the pale old shaman to the very center of the Circle, where she sat waiting, her blind eyes looking deep into the world's secret heart, where the Ancestors spoke their wisdom and decreed the Law.

The Force surged, powerful, imbalanced. The pillars seemed to rise higher, until they reached the cloud-laden heavens. Obi Wan knelt down in meditatin posture beside Oowah, and closed his eyes.

_Run with me in the Dreaming, _ the ancient one commanded.


	25. Chapter 25

**Call of the Wild**

* * *

**Chapter 25**

* * *

Oowah led the way, and the young shaman followed, fleet and sure, as though he often coursed here among the broad plains and pastures of the Dreaming.

But of course he did.

They traveled far without tiring, for here - in the unseen - distance was not weariness, and running was not motion. Around them, the Stones widened their guardian circle to embrace the entire world, until they were the pillars of being, upholding the Way, and Oowah and her companion mere sparks of light scenting the Wind, the current that moved around and within, binding all things together. At last they came to the center of the world, where its Time bubbled up out of hidden springs, a place of sweet clear water and trees that stood rooted impossibly deep, their bending boughs swaying in the Wind. Below, mottled Shadow and Light played across the soft grasses.

_This is the vergence,_ the young shaman said, in Oowah's mind. In the Dreaming, speech was thought and thought was movement.

She did not understand this word of his. _This is a Gathering,_ she corrected him, stopping in the sacred space, the still moment here where the Ancestors would soon come to partake of the bubbling spring. This was the watering place of the Dreaming, a fountain at which only shamans could drink. _Wait here with me._

They waited, and she saw that the stranger was also well-versed in patience, for he settled upon his haunches just as he did in the waking world, and quietly rested. Here, she saw, he was garbed again in his strange coverings, the white ones beneath and the dark ones over these, fluttering a little in the Wind that cavorted about him. The waters of the spring changed their path and ran uphill toward him, pooling a little at his feet. Amused, the young shaman dipped his fingers in the clear currents, smiling.

Oowah laid her ears back, Feeling the Ancestors approach. There was movement between the edges of Shadow and Light; and then, without warning, they were present. She rose and bowed before them, the circle of elders, twelve all told, each older and more luminous than the last, all crowned with magnificent ruffs, shimmering slightly where they stood.

The young shaman rose, astonished, and made a deep bow, bending in half at his middle.

_You are come in time of danger,_ the first Elder spoke. _And you are come from far distant. Why do you seek us out when your duty looms so close at hand?_

Oowah answered, for this meeting had been of her design. _This one defies the Law; he brings sorceries to the Grasslands, fire and undead things and strange Laws of his own. Is he a shaman or a black mage?_

Lodestone turned to her, and the Wind rose around him, like the fire-in-one-place which he had kindled upon the plains. He stood fast within its power, a stillness ringed with invisible flame, and Oowah cringed a little.

_The Way is one but Laws are many,_ another of the Ancestors spoke. _What do you call yourself, young one?_

_Jedi, _came the sure answer.

The eldest of the assembly spoke, his ruff a cascade of trailing pure white, his eyes clear as full moons in a summer sky. _You call yourself Way-farer. But what Law do you follow? _

Lodestone hesitated. _I follow the Code,_ he offered. _The Jedi Code. _

The elders stirred in the Wind, consulting among themselves. _Does this Code bid you to defy the Laws of others? Are you a usurper come to rule?_

Now the young shaman bowed again. Oowah recognized the signal of respect, the strangers' equivalent of a formal salute. _We come to serve,_ replied the Jeh-dai – an unfamiliar name, one she did not know but which perhaps meant this young one's pack, the people that ran among the stars.

_And how do your sorceries and misconduct serve us? _ The youngest of the Ancestors asked, softly. Oowah remembered this one, a shaman of the Stones before herself, already an old crone when she had been born a pup. Now this seer ran only in the Dreaming, her bones long ago reduced to dust upon the plains.

_I will drive away the intruders who threaten to destroy the pack… and then I will leave myself, never to return. If the Way so wills it._

It was a good answer. The Elders growled and thrummed together again, voices consonant, rumbling like young hunters though they were ageless and their forms woven of the bodiless Wind. _Then drink here, and take the strength of this place with you,_ the Eldest commanded.

Now Lodestone balked. His sky-colored eyes were troubled, and he looked to Oowah for clarification. But she had no counsel to offer; the Ancestors were wiser than she, for they dwelt in the Dreaming always.

_Why do you hesitate? You may not be of this place, but though Laws are many, the Way is one. What have you to fear? Has your alpha forbidden this?_

The young shaman nodded thoughtfully. _No…. he had taught me to value the Way, even above the Law. I think he would give his blessing._

The Eldest stirred. _Choose now. The time to act approaches; you must decide._

Oowah watched in awe as the Wind gathered close, the Ancestors fading into twelve pillars of dark stone as Lodestone bent forward and drank deeply of the bubbling waters in that Place, taking the wellsprings of the Dreaming into himself, until the bending boughs above solidified to jagged rock and the Stones darkened into the Circle, and the elders became once again a memory preserved in Song.

And Oowah stood over the strange pup, as he opened his eyes slowly, blinking in confusion at the shadows of the Circle looking above and the flickering light kindled in the pack's eyes as they gathered round, hackles bristling in terror at the strength of the Dreaming in this place. He sat up, shakily, and gazed back at them, as though seeing them for the first time, like a pup dropped to hard earth from its mother's womb. Oowah saluted him formally upon the face, and he stroked fingers along her snout in answer.

And when he stood, the Wind still clinging to him in skirls and eddies of power, the pack bared their throats to him, hailing the newborn seer of the pack, their star-sent protector.

Outside, a terrible noise rent the evening air; and a fire shattered one side of the Door into scattered fragments, smoking ruin. The pack howled and bayed in alarm; Oowah sprang after Lodestone as he leapt for the broken entrance.

Their enemies had come.


	26. Chapter 26

**Call of the Wild**

* * *

**Chapter 26**

* * *

Obi Wan cleared the gap between the leaning stones a heartbeat ahead of the next blast.

Splinters of black rock spun through the air; dust rose in a choking cloud. The heat of long range blaster packets edged the night with a hot and razored danger. The Force surged with warning, shuddering around the concealed forms of the hunters ascending the hillside, rising high within him like the spring he had encountered in the Dreaming. The voices of the Ancestors seemed to call out within its burbling tones, urging him onward, fearless.

Thunder split the sky. His saber flashed into life, growling low, echoing the rumble overhead. Another shot blazed toward him; he swung the blade in a tight arc, rebounding the powerful blast into a boulder. The huge chunk of rock exploded, sending a hail of pebbles down the slope.

There were six of them, all armed. He dashed for the swoop, leaping clear over a shot aimed at his legs, rolling past another and landing astride the machine. A third blast he swatted away with his 'saber, and then he was charging down the incline, the bike's drives whining high as he accelerated hard, driving for the nearest hunter.

A grenade sailed in a low arc toward him. He stood in the swoop's stirrups, saber blocking a shot aimed at his back, the other hand seizing the small, deadly projectile with the Force and sending in back over his shoulder in an altered trajectory. The sonic disturbance almost threw him; a shock wave rattled the intakes and sent the swoop skidding to one side.

He wrestled it upright, swerved and reversed, bearing down on the Trandoshan who crouched, malicious, behind the shelter of a jutting stone. Red energy packets sawed through the air at him; he closed the gap, defending himself in a one-handed whirl of blue light, the projectile blasts bouncing back into bushes, earth, boulders, and ultimately the hunter himself.

Obi Wan yanked the swoop's nose up at the last moment, skimming over the boulder, shouting out the bright flare in the Force as the hunter perished. A bolt grazed past his head; he abruptly turned, bringing the bike nearly into its side as he avoided the next shot and then came around hard, charging straight at the pair who bore down on him, another strange weapon propped upon their shoulders.

His eyes widened as the long tube spat forth a glittering mass of some unfamiliar thing, a golden glow that unfurled, spreading wider as it sailed toward him. The Force screamed in his blood, and he jumped clear of the swoop, clear of the unfolding energy net. The flickering web tangled about the rushing machine, closed round it, was carried forward in an explosive rush of crackling light and crushed metal, grinding into the stony earth in a bright smear of destruction. Obi Wan landed on his feet a few meters away, saber howling in a wide sphere about himself as the Trandoshans opened fire again, coming at him from two sides. He pivoted, lunged, leapt forward and carved an arm away from its torso. A spitting hiss and shriek, and he kicked his maimed foe away, ducking as the other slashed at his head, a thin shiv grasped in one scaled fist. His saber sliced the knife in two, slashed downward and narrowly missed the lithe form of his assailant. The lizard shrieked and tossed another grenade, the ball hurled with savage strength against a tree trunk behind the Jedi.

He rolled into a ball, felt the Force cushion the blow.. but the shock wave still flattened him, sent him tumbling down the slope a few paces, straight into his enemy's territory. Sheerest instinct guided him; he blocked shots on his back, twisted, caught another blast on his blade, found his feet, jumped over two more bolts, and flipped a tight spiral in midair, rebounding the last shot into one foe and landing behind the other.

The lizard turned, blaster pointing down the young Jedi's face, and howled as his hand was severed.

A wild howl from the Circle had him pelting back up the incline, taking great leaps to cover the distance. But it was too late. Raoo stood framed in the shattered Door, hackles high and voice sounding out a battle cry, as two more hunters charged up the hill, weapons at the ready. Obi Wan reached through the Force, to send them flying face-first against the unyielding ground…. But the reptilians managed to get off a shot first. The high-power bolt squealed, flashed, and ploughed straight through the alpha's furry chest, slamming his mighty body back against the Stones.

"Aaaah!" The leader's death was a blow in his solar plexus; he released it in one shouting exhalation and bounded forward, blocking the Door himself, saber carving a bright band of warning through the dark air, screaming a discordant note of battle. The Trandoshans hissed and moved forward. And now, horribly, two more of the spinning blade-disks joined them , the shrill tone of their engines competing with the 'saber's howl.

The deadly objects closed in on him simultaneously. He stepped back, between the Stones, feeling the shifting currents of the vergence take him, fill him with nauseating power, with the dizzying echoes of the Ancestors and the Dreaming. The pack scattered to the far edges, retreating before the unknown. The killer droids hurtled forward, edges a blur of motion.

Obi Wan closed his eyes, set his teeth, let the terrible compression of power here burn thorugh his every cell. The disks veered in on him, seeking his death. His blade spun, flashed, screamed defiance and obedience at once, carved the projectiles to shards, to flying slivers of light, to explosive sparks and shrapnel, a rainfall that buried itself in the dark Stone's sides. He cried out with it, the overwhelming Force here like a vise about his heart, like a flame burning along his spine, too much to channel.

And now the Trandoshands came, three ahead and two maimed companions dragging behind, glazed eyes mad with pain, all of them bristling with weaponry. They shouldered their way through the wrecked Door, their boots trudging through Raoo's blood, their tongues flickering in anger as they bared long teeth at the sole defender of the pack. Their leader raised a fist, and they fired in unison, a hail of red wrath centering on the figure in the Circle's center.

Lightning blazed overhead; the 'saber blazed below, impossible, desperate, faster than thought. Obi Wan moved without moving, the wild currents of the Force surging through him, commanding him, guiding him, weaving their own end to this tale, laying down their own Judgment on those who disdained the Law. Boltss spattered against the plasma blade, ricocheted into the sky, into the floor, into the Stones. Another hunter fell; and then another. They charged forward, converging on their prey. Thunder shook the very earth beneath them.

Obi Wan felt it before it happened. He threw himself backward, the Force like _lightning_ in his veins, a split second before the white column descended from the sky, blasting into the heart of the Circle in blinding fury, its instantaneous strike splitting into branches of obliterating fire, tongues of excoriating light, fingers striking faster than thought, skewering hunters and hunted in a single damning instant.

The branching bolt struck Obi Wan's saber, rebounding off the pure blade and throwing him hard into the Stone of Time, his weapon clattering out of his grip. The Trandoshans' screams were cut short; their smoldering corpses fell, coiled and blackened, upon the unforgiving stone. Overhead, more lightning raged and ranted. Thunder rolled over them, and then wind, and then a spattering of cold rain.

The pack howled, in terror and awe.

Obi Wan stumbled to Qui Gon, feeling the last dregs of the awful vergence draining from his limbs. He pressed both hands to the wounded Jedi's side, panting, knowing that in this last moment of impossible focus, the Force could accomplish what he could not. He let his own trifling power, the gathered currents, the Ancestors' borrowed strength all drain away into Qui Gon's body, until there was nothing left and the world grew as dim as the black stones, as the storm-fretted sky, and he spun away into blissful nothingness, collapsing across his master in utter exhaustion as the pack howled and howled, and thunder drummed it slow way across the firmament.


	27. Chapter 27

**Call of the Wild**

* * *

**Ch 27**

* * *

Geroo noticed when the alpha stranger finally woke from his fevered sleep. He did not speak or even stir.. but there was a subtle shift in the warm air amidst the stones, the gentle indrawn breath of renewal. She padded nearer, to the hollow beneath the Stone of Trial, and snuffled at his face.

Fleetwind grimaced then, showing his flat teeth, and shifted his head a bit to regard his pup. Lodestone was still sprawled halfway across his elder, wrapped deep in a hunter's slumber, the blissful relief one who had glutted himself on a fresh kill after long running. Fleetwind raised a hand and laid it against the pup's back, saying nothing, only gazing upward to the pale morning sky, where blue showed for the first time since the rains began. The Stones stood in solemn vigil, sheltering the pack. The bodies of the lizard folk still lay curled and skewed in the corners. None would touch them, charred and accursed as they were. Around Raoo's slain corpse, six were posted. These howled low and long for him, and would continue so until the moon rose tonight, and the alpha's spirit could be commended to the Dreaming properly.

Fleetwind touched her nose when she nudged him again. "I am sorry," he said in his own language. Gerroo did not know these soft sounds, but she felt sympathy in the brush of his fingers. She tilted her head to one side. There was naught to grieve in Raoo's death: he had perished defending his pack, in courageous battle as befitted a leader. His was a happy fate. And another alpha would be chosen with the rising of the moon. Those who sang for him now were full of joy at the Lawful ending of his life.

She went away to fetch him fresh meat, for the hunters had gone forth with day's beginning and brought food for the pack. Most the good flesh had been consumed already, but the pups had not yet licked all the bones clean. When she returned delicately bearing a choice scrap between her teeth, Fleetwind waved it away with a weak gesture. She prodded at Lodestone's inert form with one paw, wondering if perhaps the young hero would prefer the succulent offering for his own breakfast, but this suggestion only set Fleetwind into a soft and prolonged fit of laughter-barking.

Gerroo chuffed her indignation and sat down to consume the morsel herself; it should not go to waste, after all. Fleetwind's expression of mirth seemed to stir vitality into his pup at long last; Lodestone sat up with a start, grumbling something in his own language, his skin reddening at whatever low, teasing reply his elder made. Geroo polished off her delicious repast and cleaned her jaws with her tongue. The two shamans then slowly rose to their feet, the younger maintaining a cautionary grip about the alpha's forelegs. When they had both managed to successfully balance themselves upon their hindlegs again, Fleetwind brushed a hand over his side, where the ugly stains of his wounding had miraculously faded to a dull discoloration. Smiling, he raised the same hand to touch the pup lightly under his chin. Lodestone reddened even further, and made a deep bow to his elder, his thin hair-tail swinging over one shoulder. Gerroo stretched out luxuriantly, the excellent meal now settled happily in her belly where it was properly appreciated. The two star-dwellers began a tentative stroll about the perimeter of the Stones, speaking very softly between themselves. Full of a good meal, weary after the disturbed night and a dawn hunt, Gerroo closed her eyes and let her mind drift into a contented doze.

* * *

Oowah was witness to the strange custom. Blasphemy she would have called it before the Ancestors had given the young shaman their blessing; even now she watched in mingled awe and horror as the strangers dared to touch the filthy corpses of the lizard folk, dragging them a fair distance away from the Circle and heaping them in a pile upon the flat rocks of the hills. Carrion broad-wings floated on the wind above, eager for feasting.

But this was not to be, for the two strangers set many dead limbs of trees and bushes about the heap of slain foes, and with their skyfire set flame to them. Soon the pile was roaring with consuming fire, and an evil stink rose to stain the heavens, and the scavengers fled in terror as the black smoke rose in an obscene column.

The two shamans backed away and then stood close together, watching, as forbidden fire ate the bodies of the slain.

_Why do you do this?_ Oowah demanded. _Is it the Law of your people?_

Fleetwind, the tall alpha, made an image in her mind, one of bird and beast gnawing upon the flesh of the reptile folk, and later writhing in pain, dying of diseases unknown. Oowah considered this; perhaps if these foes had come from beyond the skies, they brought with them illness new to the grasslands. It was a deep thought, one the Ancestors had not shown her yet. Her blind eyes stared vacantly at the place where the fire danced and flickered, and her nose wrinkled at the vile stench of burning flesh. It seemed wrong, and yet had not the Ancestors said that the Way was one, though Laws were many?

Lodestone knelt down beside her, resting one hand in the thick white of her ruff. Oowah permitted this, for the pup had drunk of the Dreaming waters, and called down skyfire in Judgment upon the pack's enemies. He was no longer a stranger, though his Law remained foreign and mysterious. She thrummed low in her throat, as the fire burned away the remnants of the invasion and purified the Land, and the three of them lingered halfway between the hot ash-laden air of this moment and the sweet-flowing wind of the Dreaming.

* * *

The moon rose full that night, a mother ready to drop her litter. The Stones were silvered beneath its pale disk; the pack gathered inside the Circle to howl for Raoo.

The cheiftain's body lay in the center of the ring, his brindled coat stirred in the night breeze, in the hot wind. His eyes were closed forever, and his feet would no longer run upon the grasses. His leadership had found refuge for the pack in time of need, and preserved them through many seasons of Judgement. He had accepted the strangers into the pack, with a wisdom befitting the Ancestors, and he had died nobly protecting his clan. The moon shone down upon his remains, too, touching them in white light. Tomorrow the birds would come, and then the chitatik, to clean the bones away and carry the spirit back to the Dreaming. Now the pack would howl, sealing Raoo's name into the pack-song, into memory which ran along the wide plain with the young and the old.

Gerroo stood beside Lodestone and Fleetwind. They sat like the other pack members, faces outlined in silver by the shining moon. She raised her head and gave the first call, the cry of Gladness. Oowah followed with the cry of Farewell, and then the pack joined in, every throat bared to the moon overhead, to the Laws of the pack and to the invisible Way that bound them, their voices deep and high, strong and quavering, pouring out their joy and grief and thanksgiving in a chorus that shook the hills.

Perhaps it echoed down the valleys of the Dreaming, too; for when Gerroo glanced at Lodestone, she saw a strange glistening in his eyes as he turned toward Fleetwind. The elder touched the pup's shoulder briefly, and then threw back his own head, sounding a low and sonorous note into the sky along with the pack. Lodestone hesitated another few moments, the top of his face folding into lines, as it so often did when he was pensive, and then he relaxed, baring his flat teeth and raising his own face to the bright, wide-eyed moon.

Gerroo's ears perked as she caught the pure tone of Lodestone's howl, young and strong and resonant, the cry of a hunter, of a pathfinder, of an alpha and a seer like Oowah. She joined him, and Fleetwind, and all her clan, in bidding farewell to Raoo's spirit and celebrating the end of Judgement. The howling continued for a long stretch of time, until the moon had ascended past the Circle and hung high in the sky overhead.

And Gerroo understood that this was a farewell to the strangers as well, for their time here had come to an end and they would soon depart. The pack would choose another alpha, with the help of Oowah and the Ancestors, and they woudl return to their scent-boundaries, to the Law of the grasses. The newcomers woudl return to their Law and their hunting grounds, too, among the stars. She licked Lodestone's ear one last time in parting and padded away as the gathering dispersed, her paws carrying her down the slopes in the wake of her packmates, their feet following the Way and their Law, running upon the wide grasses beneath a warm wind.


	28. Chapter 28

**Call of the Wild**

* * *

**Chapter 28**

* * *

Qui Gon let Obi Wan handle the piloting. He sank gratefully into the copilot's seat, watching his apprentice run hands over the unfamiliar console and controls of the Trandoshan hunting skiff.

"Well, I think I can manage not to crash it," was the young Jedi's understated assessment of his own ability. "Or if I do, I shall be certain it's on a world where there are abundant _public baths."_

The Jedi master leaned his head against the seat's molded backrest and closed his eyes. "Public, my young Padawan? Since when have you become an exhibitionist?"

"I follow your example in all things, master."

The ship's drives began their warm up cycle. QuiGon could sense his companion frowning over the nav-comp, plotting out the fastest course to Coruscant… and a long, hot washing-up. He smiled. "You did not contract food poisoning, as you feared," he pointed out.

"I think I still might be sick," his apprentice griped.

The interior of the Trandoshan vessel did ….reek. Like the blazes. "Just use the cargo hold," Qui Gon advised heartlessly. "I prefer the cockpit to remain relatively clean."

"_Yes,_ master." The navcomp blipped its readiness, but the sluggish engines were still in their radiation damping cycle. Trandoshans were notorious for ill-maintained equipment.

A pensive silence fell between them. Qui Gon felt his Padawan's mood slide toward melancholy, and reeled him back in, with the ease of long habit. "I must thank you again for healing me… and for defending the pack so ably, Obi Wan."

He didn't even need to see the raised eyebrow. "If I have impressed you, master, then I must by the same token fear the Council's censure."

There was something underlying that taunt, a source of unease. But Qui Gon knew that he must delve gently, deviously. He opened his eyes. "I am more than impressed," he said, sincerely. "I am very proud of you."

It was a disarming strike. Obi Wan flushed deeply, and deflected the praise with a change of topic. "This planet," he mused, deftly moving the focus of conversation away from himself, "It's not listed in the Republic… we ought to initiate a Senate report. Should they not have status as a sentient inhabited world?"

Qui Gon sighed. He had been pondering the same question, but with very different results. "I think perhaps they would be better served by a declaration of protected wildlife status. That would prevent trade and industrial interests from ever setting foot here. Ghe-Ru and here people are very primitive. What good would a political entanglement do them?"

Obi Wan toggled impatiently at the drive controls, making no answer.

"I sense that you agree with me. The Living Force is remarkably pure here… and these people live in tune with it. Membership in the Republic would only spoil that harmony."

"Master! What are you saying?"

Qui Gon shifted in his seat, watching his Padawan carefully. "You know full well. Do not pretend outrage. You can meditate on it later – I think you will find that simply because we as Jedi serve the Republic, it does not follow that we must find it above all reproach. Civilization does have its discontents."

The engines finally signaled their readiness, but Obi Wan did not move.

"Master…" he began, tentatively.

Qui Gon waited, patient and pleased. His roundabout prodding had finally succeeded. Now would come the confession of personal disquiet.

"When you were ill, before the hunters arrived," Obi Wan continued, gathering courage as he spoke, as true to form as ever, "I shared a meditation with Ooh-wan. Their shaman. In the Circle. And I encountered beings she called the Ancestors, in a vision – in the Force. Only it was more than a vision, I feel sure of it. They were present in the Force, master, but as individuals, although they have all died."

Qui Gon's heart thrilled within him. There were things he had studied… wondered at… but this was not the time to discuss them. Obi Wan was not yet ready. "This disturbs you."

"Yes. Is such a thing even… possible, master?"

A corner of Qui Gon's mouth lifted. "You experienced it firsthand, and yet you ask whether it is possible?" he replied, reasonably.

The Padawan scowled and looked away. "They were in the Force. But they barely knew of the Jedi or the Code. I… I accepted their help, master. Was that wrong?"

Ah. The crux of the matter. He inhaled deeply, seeking balance and wisdom before making his reply. "The Force is greater than the Order. There are other communities of Force-users in the galaxy, and perhaps some we do not know of. And your experience… it admits of many interpretations. I trust you not to choose any action that is Dark. If your heart assured you of that much, then you should rest at ease. Whatever you saw or felt in your meditation came from the Force and served its purpose. You need not understand it fully, so long as you serve with an open heart."

"Because the Way is one."

Qui Gon nodded. "At root, yes."

Obi Wan released a pent up breath, expelling anxiety with it. "Thank you," he said, finally turning to the console again, and engaging the ship's engines.

"My pleasure," the Jedi master smiled, "You've earned the right to some wisdom, I think."

The Padawan ran a disgruntled hand over his stubbled chin and gazed woefully at his filthy nails. "I'd rather have that _bath_ we were discussing earlier," he grumbled.

They rose into the skies, the grasses shrank to a rumpled sea of green and brown. "Nonsense," Qui Gon lightly answered. "You are a natural. I foresee you retiring in a barren wilderness and dwelling happily in a cave for the remainder of your years."

His apprentice snorted in disdain. "The entire Republic will fall into ruin before you see that," he quipped.

They chuckled a little together, and ascended into the stars.

Below, Gerroo and the pack ran along under the dwindling shadow of their vessel, howling a last farewell and thanks into the clear blue. And then the Jedi were gone, leaving only the wind and the wide plains and the eternal, life-giving Way behind.

**FINIS**


End file.
